The Planner

Chapter Fourteen: Shadow

At 3am at the World Trade Center Plaza, thirty people exited the North Tower via the underground car park and dispersed into the night. The office cleaning crew, they work every night from 6pm to 3am.¹¹⁸

Across the road, four men in a white van were dozing. The back of the van was piled high with numbered colored packages.

A cell phone woke up the guy in the driver’s seat.

“Ok. We’re ready for the elevator upgrade,” said a voice on the phone.

“Yeah,” replied the sleepy man and clicked off the phone.

“Oi, guys. Come-on. Elevator — Upgrades — R — Us,” he called to his colleagues.

The driver started up the van and drove across the road into the WTC underground car park.

* * * *

Planner skipped breakfast to arrive at the aircraft in advance of the rest of the team to go over some changes in the day’s schedule. He entered the rear door of the E4-B and was greeted by Colonel Purple.

“All ready for another day, Sir?” he said.

“Locked and loaded,” said Planner. They exchanged a few pleasantries as they walked down to the small conference room.

Planner extracted a document from his briefcase to explain to Purple his proposed changes. “We need to go over the communications systems and the radars again. As well as listen again to the aircraft transmissions.”

“As many times as you need, Sir.”

They agreed the changes and Planner prepared to go to the galley to make up for missing breakfast and casually said, “Thanks, Colonel, that’s much appreciated. Oh, and I’m apologising in advance for the changes of plan that we’ll be making on the day.” Planner knew it was inevitable that they would be changes to the plan as events transpired. However, Purple seemed to read a different meaning into this innocuous statement.

“Indeed, Sir,” said Purple with a fixed smile. Then the Colonel, stepped to Planner’s side and said in hushed tones, “I have been briefed about that by the Shadow Team…”

Planner was electrified by this comment but tried to hide it, “Shadow Team… Right.” Planner fumbled with his folder and dropped the document he was holding.

Planner said, thinking fast as he picked the document back up, “I presume they’ve only told you the minimum you need to know, not the complete picture.”

“Just about the tidy up, Sir. I think that’s enough,” said Purple carefully.

“Indeed that’s enough. The bigger picture will become obvious later on,” said Planner. He faked a smile and left hastily. The Colonel raised his eyes to the ceiling.

* * * *

The lining inside the Communication Room, muffled the noise of the engines and the hum of air conditioning. Planner was being briefed by Captain Ochre on the communications equipment.

“Unlike SRAS¹¹⁹, there really is not any non-repudiation on civilian communications,” explained Ochre.

“You can spoof any number, any communication?” asked Planner.

“Sure”

“So how do you do it?” enquired Planner.

“So to spoof¹²⁰ any number, cell phone or land line, you enter the calling id here,” said the young man, pointing to an odd-style, push button telephone pad. “Do that first before making the outgoing call which you do using the standard keyboard. You can save all the caller ids and outgoing call numbers in this preset list: Only ten per terminal though. The technology used here is quite old.”

“So you can call any number from any number?” said Planner.

“Any number to any number. All voice calls are beamed to our dedicated communication satellite and just patched through into the public telephone traffic. It will even be billed to the calling number,” smiled Ochre.

“Right. And Radio?”

“Aircraft Radio transmissions are trickier. They use ACARS¹²¹ but these too can be spoofed using a similar technique. The only problem with spoofing ACARS is the inclusion of navigation and maintenance data. And you can roughly track the source transmission; plus or minus fifty miles,” he explained.

“Right. So when we switch to drones, we need to switch off ACARS on the real flight and switch on our spoof recorded transmissions transmitted by the E4-B,” said Planner.

“Hey, it’s like you planned it,” joked Ochre.

“Thanks but I don’t think I went into this much detail. It was just a note on a To-Do list. Someone else made it happen,” smiled Planner.

Planner was just about the leave when he had a thought, “Just wondering whether I could test some of this out and make a private call,” he said.

“Go for it,” said Ochre. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”

Ochre stepped into the corridor, allowing Planner to make a private call. He typed his cell phone number into the old-style keypad and entered another number into the computer.

He could hear the phone ring on his headsets. The phone was picked up. “Hi, Turq. It’s Planner,” he said.

“Hi, Boss,” came her cheerful reply over the headset.

“Can you see my caller id?” asked Planner.

“Yes. Calling from your Blackberry? When will they get you flying?” Turq said.

Planner smiled, the test of the spoof system had worked.

Planner changed the subject, “How did it go in Florida with the package delivery?”

“Good. We’re on record; Atta went to hospital. He’s fine though… suspects nothing. And Hiijii has now left the country. He dropped everything; didn’t even pack.¹²²”

“Great. Excellent. Anything else going on?”

“Yes, I’ve liaised with some of the ground teams. We’re all on track at the airports and airlines,” she said hinting that something might not be on track elsewhere.

“Go on,” said Planner paternally.

“I found out about bomb sniffing dog patrols at the WTC. I didn’t know whether it was important or not but I sent a message to Kroll to stop the police dog patrols¹²³,” said Turq diplomatically.

“Good,” said Planner. “You’ve done the right thing.”

“I found out about them from the Elevator upgrade people,” she said euphemistically. “Who also said that they want complete power downs of the electricity in the towers for a few nights¹²⁴.”

“Well that’s ok, isn’t it?” asked Planner.

“Well, no. The place has computers that run 24-7,” said Turq.

“Well perhaps some warnings over the public address system and some private words. The less written evidence the better,” said Planner.

“Right.”

“I have another thing for you, Turq. I need a couple more for WITSEC.”

“Ok. I’ll pass through. I just need gender, age and ethnicity. If you have a photo all the better. You need to say what plane they’ll be on. I can arrange tickets.” Said Turq.

“No tickets required. They’ll be, er… lost in the towers.”

“Ok. There’s quite a few of them. That’s fine. So who will it be?”

“Female, 36, Caucasian, Blonde hair, blue eyes…” said Planner.

“Ok. Don’t worry about eye color. That can be fixed later. The other?” asked Turq.

“Female, 10, Caucasian, baseball player.”

Turq almost laughed, “Baseball. Ha. Ok, got it. I’ll FedEx details out to you by the weekend.”

“Thanks,” said Planner and was about to cut the call.

“Are you bailing out too?” asked Turq.

Planner was confused, “No. Why?”

“I heard that Bates was going,” she said.

“No… might he be part of the… er… Shadow Team?” ventured Planner awkwardly.

“Shadow Team!? Counterintelligence¹²⁵? News to me. Though I suspect there would be some of that sort going on. There usually is for operations as large as this,” remarked Turq.

“Ok. Thanks,” said Planner. As he processed the information, to fill the silence in the conversation, he showed his level of distraction by asking, “Are you coming out to Oklahoma?”

“I think I have enough to do here,” she said flatly.

“I’m sure you do. Can you patch me through to Operation Carrot, to… Jenny in Operation Carrot?” said Planner. He had struggled to remember her name. He wanted to say “Stick” since that was the operation she ran. He had used a memory mnemonic: Stick, with a Carrot-Red Hair, in the ground like a carrot, rising up like a genie, rhymes with Jenny. Visual imagery: it seemed to work.

“Hang on.”

The young Captain poked his head through the door, “Everything ok? I heard the word patch.”

Planner said to Ochre, “Yeah. All good. No problem.”

A female voice over the headphones said, “Hello, Planner?”

“Hi, Jenny. I just wondered whether you were working on any counterintelligence plans for Stages A and B,” mused Planner.

“Yes, we’ve got that sorted,” said Jenny smugly.

“Do you have any details?” asked Planner expansively.

“It’s outside my chain of command,” she said briskly. “There’s shadow teams making sure that each operation isn’t accidently or deliberately leaking information.”

“And there’s coordination amongst the teams? Making sure that no-one trips up, right?” said Planner pleasantly.

“Right,” she said over the headphones and then went silent.

“I was wondering whether every team member isn’t already under the Carrot treatment plan in your computer CRM system?” asked Planner.

After a minor pause, she said. “This is not a good topic of conversation, Planner. It’s best we wrapped this up now. Bye.” She cut the call.

Planner sat nodding to himself knowing he had found something.

* * * *

The air stewards that served food for the crew were not available after the first flight. Catering onboard the Kneecap had become self-service. Planner was eating an airline style meal in the Rest Area. Bates came to sit besides him. He had a similar meal.

“The menu quality has gone down hill,” he said cheerfully.

“Imagine eating this for a week?” said Planner.

“I’d die of scurvy,” said Bates. But he started on the macaroni cheese meal anyway.

As Planner finished his meal, he said. “So have you’ve figured out what to do after the Big Event yet?”

“Hang out on a nice tropical island. Not too big, not too small; Some scuba diving; wild beach parties…” said Bates, tilting his head and smiling.

“Sounds nice.”

“And you?” enquired Bates.

“Find a clever lady and have an ordinary life.”

“That sounds er… rather… surprising,” said Bates wide eyed.

“You mean dull, smiled Planner. “It’s ok. I don’t expect you to understand. But I had it all once. And I miss it now.”

Bates finished his meal and said, “Well, you, hell-raiser, you; Let’s get back to the shock and awe!”

Bates walked away, leaving on his seat a crushed Rainbow Document, recognisable by the seven-sided Rainbow logo. Planner casually picked it up and examined the logo. He noticed that the logo had a faint but noticeable shading around its edge: a shadow.

* * * *

Planner stood in the center of the Command Room with the majority of the Rainbow Team in the room. “Ok Guys. I want to go through the whole thing again using the simulators but going at twice actual speed. So not real time. The thing to watch for is the extent of ground radar cover, keep that as an overlay on your computer screen. Make sure that the drone switch occurs outside of the ground radar zone.”

He checked his watch, “Ok. 0-8-hundred hours. Flight 11 takes off from Boston and Flight 93 takes off, at the same time, from Newark. Keep everything normal until all four jets are in the air. At 0-8-10, Flight 77 takes off from Washington. 0-8-15, Flight 175 takes off from Boston. Now, remember, Flight 175, the flight with three digits, has 200 passengers for the Witness Protection Programme. They’ll be flown to Cleveland and the reception center there¹²⁶. 175’s transponder signal and call sign will change before it lands. All the radar tracks, remember, will only be visible to us, using the AWACS radar.”

Looking over at Indigo, Planner forced eye contact and said, “0-8-20, we’ll phone through the bomb threat.”

Bates said, “Indigo, best if you go to the Communications room to do that. It’s sound insulated there.”

“Ok,” said Indigo.

Planner continued, “At 0-8-25, Flights 11 and 175 will enter the no-radar Zone, switch off both transponders and Flight 11 will land at Stewart Air Force Base while 175 will continue on. In the meantime, Magenta…”

Young Captain Magenta waved his hand.

“…will align its drone to shadow Flight 11, then we will remotely switch on its transponder and it will continue on as Flight 11. We have a couple of minutes to do this in the no-radar zone. But,” Planner emphasised, “If we have to do it within the radar zone, heaven forbid, we have one turn of a radar sweep, two seconds, to make the change seamless.” Planner looked around the room to make sure everyone was following the instructions. “Old-Flight 175 follows Flight 93 up to Cleveland to disguise itself on radar. So similar switches for Flights 77 and 93. The difference being after the switch, those airliners will be close to us in the E4-B and they’ll fly behind us and follow us back to base. Only Flight 77 drone will have a chase aircraft to make sure it doesn’t go astray. We’ll be looking after the others. Everyone got that?”

Everyone nods.

“Ok, once the switch has taken place. We are on the stage. The world stage. It is up to the Contact Team to act out the scripts or play the audio tapes we have in place.” Planner pointed to the contact team: Tangerine, Mint and Mahogany. Tangerine and Mint were two forty year old talented voice actors while Mahogany was a thirty year old Black woman. “So, Tangy, Minty and Moggy, we have to make it look good.”

Mahogany laughed, Tangerine smiled while Mint sneered his best thespian sneer.

“Ok. Let’s Roll.”

* * * *

Katherine was working on her home computer in her spare bedroom converted into an office. There are piles of folders around her, many marked “ENRON”. She had a mouthful of sandwich when her cell phone rang.

She made a sandwich-muffled grunt into the phone.

“It’s Robert,” said the voice on the phone.

She swallowed, “Hi, Robert. Just thinking about you. How’s it going?”

“In one sense very well. In another… more paranoia,” he said.

“D-Squad or Four Horseman levels of paranoia?” she joked.

“Both.”

She puts her sandwich down. “What can you tell me?”

“Without my powerpoint slides, not very much,” he said.

Exasperated, she said, “So a clue maybe?”

“Well, it happened this morning,” said Planner carefully. “We’re all using aliases here…”

“You are?” interrupted Katherine.

“Er… yes, standard practise,” said Planner blandly.

“So are you really called Robert?” she said tartly.

“Yes,” he said.

“And Smith?” she said with a hint of sarcasm.

“Maybe not,” he said apologetically.

Katherine picked up Planner’s TASC business card that he had given her. It was attached to the edge of her computer monitor. “But I have your business card!” she said in shock.

“Not technically accurate,” said Planner.

“I can’t believe that you lied. Worse still you took a name like Smith?” said Katherine wide-eyed.

“I know it dishonours all Smiths,” said Planner trying to make a joke, “Sorry, I’m trying to tell it the way it is.”

“An honest liar?” she mused with venom. “I’ll have to take some time to process that…”

“Let me tell you my story,” said Planner.

After a pause, she said curtly, “Go on.”

“On the course today, I think, because of the aliases we use, I believe I was mistaken for someone else,” said Planner carefully.

“I think I know the feeling,” she said with an edge.

“…Someone who is involved in an even darker plot,” said Planner and then he realised his voice was starting to crack up. “…to my own dark plot.”

Katherine was silent.

“Ok. I know this is all indefensible,” said Planner.

“And you’re still not going to tell me,” said Katherine steely.

“I’m… sorry,” Planner was just about able to utter.

“What the hell is going on?” Katherine said loudly. “What have you got yourself into? Hey, what have I got myself into?”

“You were already in it…” Planner said. “From the Enron angle. You just didn’t know it.”

“This is all too much! Too much for me!” Katherine cried.

“I understand,” Planner said trying to interrupt.

“I have enough to deal with already,” she shouted and threw the phone on the floor. Tears streamed down her face. After a minute, she picked up the phone and wiped the tears from her eyes. She pressed a call-back button.

“Are you in danger?” she said meekly.

“Yes, I think I am,” said Planner meekly.

“Can I do anything?” she whispered.

“Just remember what I said about the CEO.”

“Ok,” she said with a sob.

Planner ends the call. Katherine dropped the phone and hid her head in her hands.

* * * *

September 10th, 2001, the lead news item on TV was given by a TV news reader, “After the DoD have admitted that they cannot trace 2.3 trillion dollars in their computer systems, Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld has announced a War on Bureaucracy, setting up a taskforce in the Pentagon to track down the missing money and improve the collection of financial information within his department…”¹²⁷