The “Subject:” line was my idea, And Aaron seemed delighted at the suggestion.

“The truth will set you free. ...But first it will piss you off” he grinned.

“One of my personal favorites from the ever-quotable Gloria Steinem” I smiled back.

“Eerily appropriate. OK. We'll have LILITH re-encrypt the dossiers, ship them off to their subjects with your wickedly droll cover letter and a one-time decryption key that only they could know.”

“How can you use a key that only they can know, when they're not expecting this email and can't possibly know the key?”

Aaron gave me a sly smile and his eyes did that twinkle they did when he was really proud of something. “Deep data mining my dear. LILITH will ask them something that even they didn't know they knew!”

I know he chided me on constantly giving him 'the Spock eye', but I couldn't help raising my eyebrow at this claim. I knew him too well to doubt it, but I still couldn't wrap my brain around how he was going to do it.

He snorted at my raised eyebrow and skeptical face, Then, as I knew he would, he explained. OK, I had really set him up to boast how he did it, which he would be too modest to do unless I challenged him with the Spock-eye.

“Everyone who has a dossier has something to hide. Some of it is scandalous, but the goons data mining is so thorough, most of it is boring but not widely known. So, we mine the mundane and arcane to stitch together a 'clue' to a one-time password that only the recipient has a likelihood of discerning.

Let's find an example...” he sat at his hackbook and queried LILLITH.

“OK. Here's a clue for one recipient 'Four fields. The password to your unlisted account at Bank Geneve followed by the middle name of your illegitimate child, the year and make of the car your father first let you borrow when you got your license, and ….oh LILLITH you have outdone yourself!.... your oldest living aunt's childhood bestfriend's older brothers nickname.”

“How can LILLITH know any of this stuff?”

“I did mention that the network is ….thorough.... didn't I?” he beamed “...but this... this is even more than I expected. And I know better than anyone what LILLITH is capable of.”

“OK. But the Aunt's friends, brother's ….what the hell?”

Aaron twisted his face a bit still grinning. “Yeah, that one surprised me too. The clue was supposed to be the most mundane and arcane bits LILITH could find... but... that... let me dig....” and he turned back to his hackbook. A few moments later he raised his head beaming with ….pride?

“Oh Eve, you're gonna LOVE this! LILITH did a search through genealogical records of the recipient's family tree, cross referenced relatives with phone and email records of the recipient. It turns out he has an elderly aunt who emails him at holidays from her AOL account. So she's still alive, and he knows how to reach her. Digging through her records, it came across a phone conversation she had years ago with her oldest childhood friend who was in hospice care across the country...”

“Wait. LILITH accessed an old telephone conversation?”

“Off topic.” Aaron waved his hands. “Old long distance calls were multiplexed microwave or maybe satellite, Any hop across borders or outside of ….domestic airspace.... constitutes an 'international connection' and domestic surveillance restrictions come off.”

“But!...” I started to protest, wide-eyed at this casual revelation. He quickly waved me off.

“Off...TOPIC!”

I bit my lip.

“So, the aunt is reminiscing with her dying friend and talking about the crush she used to have on her older brother Tobias when they were girls....” he grinned.

“So the recipient will call his old aunt ask her this crazy question and find out the piece of the decryption key is ….Toby?...” I nodded. This WAS impressive.

Aaron grinned widely and his eyes lit up as he shook his head. “Spanky!” he clucked.

“Spanky?”

“Apparently young Toby fancied himself the ladies' man and he was notorious for swatting his sisters prettier friends on the behind as he passed. They reminisced about that in their conversation.”

“The DOG!” I gasped. But couldn't help but laugh.

“Good luck to ANYONE else who thinks they will be able to break THAT key!” Aaron howled. “Like I said, the one time keys are things only the recipients could know... and even THEY don't know that they know them!”

“Arcane and mundane! R00TKID, you're a genius!” and without thinking, I bent over and planted a huge kiss on his cheek.

I'm not sure which of us blushed more, but Aaron got suddenly shy again. “It wasn't really me. It was LILITH and SIMON” he peeped.

I refused to break my smile. “And WHERE exactly did LILITH and SIMON come from?” I put my hands on his shoulders, and held him in front of me, holding his gaze. “You must be such a proud papa!”

At that he broke into a wide smile and clutched me to him in a hug so tight I nearly had the breath squeezed out of me.

That went on for an awkwardly long time, until it was clear that his pride had been replaced by another emotion. And I wasn't sure I was quite ready for that.

So, as I always do, I changed the subject.

“OK. Blackmail dossiers are going out to their subjects. Collaborators' dossiers are going to the media. Goons' encryption keys are being changed so they can't access their own records. Financial market siphons are being redirected to recompense their former victims. Now it's time for the really fun part.”

“Operation fingertrap” he grinned.

“I still wish you had let me call it operation 'roach motel'”

“Hey, spygirl... you're lucky I let you call it 'operation anything'” he grinned.

“Hey. We all voted. Your people liked my idea. Democracy dude.”

“Hmmph. The Lady 3V3 never turned my troops against me.” he mock scowled.

“Maybe you just never gave her the opportunity” I petulantly shot back. “Maybe like LILITH she would have surprised you.”

He turned to me. Took my hands in his and said softly. “She already HAS....”

I think we both grew up on too much TV, because I knew he too was thinking 'fade to black ...annnd... commercial....”

Instead there was this awkward cough, breaking touch, shuffling, and getting back to helping the goons self-destruct.

It had been at least a half hour and no one had come looking for him. Bill Lynch pulled himself from the dumpster and wiped the filth from his tailored suit as best he could. He fished the secure Blackberry from his jacket pocket and rang C&C.

“Operator.”

“Raptor. Code 6. S-I-X. Sector C. Charlie. NOW!”

click

“Operations.”

“Dayton. What the fuck is up?”

“Sir? ...umm... secure?”

“Jesus Christ! Of course secure. I'm in field and being pursued. What the fuck is up?”

“No idea sir. Everything here is nominal. We were beginning to wonder where you were.”

“Being hunted. Like I SAID! ...fuck... S.I.Monitor's compromised. You saw nothing?”

“No sir. Just the usual ordinary.”

“We 're being fucked with. They rigged every traffic light. Put false traffic on secure police channels. Put a fucking A.P.B. out on us. ….No... On ME..... that little fuckstick is coming after ME personally.”

“Who sir? And why would anyone go after you?”

“Well, he's not going to get away with it. Him and his pencil neck army.... and that goddam bitch of his.” Lynch laughed bitterly at the thought that it was him who made her his goddam 'bitch'.

“Activate RenOps. Protocol Alpha. I repeat ALPHA. I need a grab 10 fucking minutes ago.”

“Alpha. Yes sir. Target?”

Lynch laughed. “Me.”

The RENdition Operations team was well trained. They were the elite of the elite. Nothing phased them. But when the order came for a Protocol Alpha sortie, they all looked at each other.

No one spoke. They were too well trained. They knew Protocol Alpha as well as any of their missions. Still, they had never done it outside of drills and training. They wondered if this was just the most realistic drill yet. They would know soon enough. If any of them returned alive.

Protocol Alpha was the plan in the playbook designed for renditioning high-profile, heavily protected targets.... hostile heads of state, religious leaders, drug kingpins.... the top of whatever organizational pyramid it was used against. It was designed to provoke mayhem and raise the noise level, distracting defenses so that when the actual, targeted action went down, security and defense forces were too overwhelmed and distracted to react in time to prevent it.

Put simply, it was designed to create maximum collateral damage.

As they scattered to their separate unmarked vans, the commander yelled out after them the mantra they already knew so well.

“Remember. Maximum casualties, minimum kills. Injured take a team, bodies just take a bag.”

As the sea of vans pulled out of the nondescript office parks that littered northern Virginia and southern Maryland, and details of the mission were given to each team as they headed for their positions, they listened intently and said nothing. As trained. However every man was thinking they could never actually envision circumstances in which protocol Alpha would be triggered. And they couldn't begin to wrap their minds around the fact that it was being used on home soil, as government commandos were being unleashed to wreak violent mayhem on the nation's capitol. They were too well-trained to be distracted by such deeply alarming thoughts, so they focused on their individual roles in this elaborately choreographed exercise.

“So, he's hiding in a dumpster in DC... with all the rest of the vermin.” I chuckled. “What's next?”

“We let him go.” R00tkid said quietly.

“What?” I couldn't believe what he was saying, much less the quiet, emotionless way he said it. Then I realized... he was methodically extrapolating this chess move.

“We've rattled him. That will make him even more reckless. Now we let him get back to Command and Control …barely, and he will be sure by his own wiles and wits. It will make him even more cocky and he will construct an even bigger noose for us, which he will slip himself into without even realizing.”

SIMon's pattern alarms turned our attention to the multiple windows showing white vans streaming from corporate parking garages ringing the district. It looked like something out of those old 1960s movies... or Mike Myers' parody in the first Austin Powers film. Multiple windows on large monitors all showing seemingly the same thing... scores of unremarkable white vans streaming onto highways and connectors headed for the city.

“What the hell is he up to? This is BIG.” R00tkid rubbed the back of his neck.

“Is he planning some kind of diversion?” ...it was the only thing I could think of, yet still it made no sense.

“That would be like starting a forest fire to hide the fact that you were littering. It's insanely disproportionate.”

Then Aaron's eyes got distant and I could see he was deep in thought.

“Sonofabitch. That's exactly what he's doing. Insanely disproportionate is his trademark!”

And with that he ran to his hackbook and started querying Lillith.

“Holy shit. I think this is protocol Alpha!”

“What's protocol Alpha?”

“It's this ridiculous wargame scenario that makes all the military boys breathe hard. It's like something out of a bad Tom Clancy knockoff... or Dr Strangelove. I think it goes back to when certain think tanks were tasked to come up with insane schemes to kidnap and brainwash Stalin... then they updated it for Castro... Qadaffi, Hussein, Kohmeni... you name it they have a variation. Basically it involves throwing an insane amount of covert commandos into a hostile theater to create total confusion while the leader is snatched & bagged. This is like porn for pentagoners. Like global thermonuclear wargames, no one would actually DO this.”

“Except for our rattled and reckless friend.”

Aaron nodded solemnly. “ I believe so.”

“So what's the point? Who is he kidnapping?”

“Well, there was that whole hoax at the Senate office building, but they already nabbed the committee chair. SIMon logged that. I can't think of any other targets valuable enough to warrant this extreme an action....”

R00tkid furrowed his brow, obviously searching for an answer that fit, no matter how unlikely. Suddenly he burst out in the widest grin I'd ever seen.

“Hahahahaha” he cackled with glee. “It sounds ridiculous, but I think there's only one target he would consider important enough to provoke this extreme rendition offensive.”

“Who?” I was lost... I could usually almost keep up with Aaron, but this time I had no idea where he was headed. “Who the hell could Lynch want to grab badly enough to unleash US commandos on the damned capital?”

Rootkid beamed the most menacing grin I've ever seen and replied quietly “Himself”

I was stunned. We planned to rattle him, and I thought we had succeeded, but this was mind boggling.

“You mean he's having hundreds of guerrilas randomly attack Washington DC just to get himself out?”

“Looks that way.” R00tkid smiled. “I guess he scares much more than we thought.”

“That WEASEL!” I was beside myself. My fury was uncontrollable and I had no desire to control it. Words can't describe the ….contempt... I felt towards this evil sociopathic ...coward!

“How many people are going to be injured or killed by this stunt of his?”

“No telling. As many as possible, that's the point. Maximum distraction.”

“We have to stop this!”

“No kidding. I'm still working on how...” Even while he was talking with me, explaining his theory about what was really going on and why, Aaron was already frantically working his hackbook, planning a dozen moves ahead. As always.

“They're still about 10 to 12 minutes from their marks, when they will deploy and start raising hell. We don't have much time.”

I had a thought. “We don't have an army of our own, but we do have the grid. What if we tamper with traffic signals and cause accidents to block their path? I know it's dragging random folks into the battle, but it seems they will do worse.”

His face was somber. “Yeah. Much worse. That's the point. I hate to stoop to their tactics, but it may be the best option. Wrecked cars and exploded airbags beats a deliberate massacre. Time to create some surgical collateral damage to prevent massive collateral damage. Eve, you're brilliant!” He smiled. I blushed. And I hoped my spur of the moment idea actually worked.

It didn't take long to find out. It's amazing how people will proceed into a busy intersection just because the light tells them to, ignoring cross traffic that shows no signs of slowing, let alone stopping. I guess that's why some people follow their GPS devices into lakes and over cliffs.

Yes. My crazy scheme worked. And R00tkid sweetened it by tampering with natural gas regulators and electrical transformer controls to cause spontaneous explosions in utility tunnels, the end effect was launching heavy manhole covers like projectiles as the target vans passed on the roads overhead. I marvelled at how quickly R00tkid conceived of this plan, worked out how to implement it, and put it into action, becoming quite precise amazingly fast. It was like watching a virtuoso gamer instantly pick up a difficult game moments after first encountering it. His face was an odd mix of intense concentration and deep satisfaction at his quick mastery. I knew that he was keenly aware this was no videogame. Still, the skills he had honed as a geeky kid, served him well in protecting countless scores ...perhaps hundreds of innocent bystanders from getting caught up in Bill Lynch's savage wargames.

I helped by disrupting communication channels. The goon's command center had no idea that their plan was rapidly falling apart. The only chaos actually unleashed was on them. None of the strike teams could get through to report failure of their prime objective and seek alternate orders. And these folks were not trained to show initiative or think for themselves. In fact they were brutally conditioned NOT to think for themselves. So, barring any orders, they just waited. Harmlessly.

The one mission that DID get through was the prime team sent to retrieve the target. Only they didn't lose communication. They just had their communication – and their orders – adjusted. By us.

The original orders were to 'nab' the target, but they were to specify that this was not in fact a hostile, but the Director. Making this not a kidnapping, but a rescue. The mission would remain the same until contact. At that point, the Director would be treated as a valuable recovered asset, not a prisoner. However R00tkid and I decided to 'tweak' the orders. The rendition team was informed that they were grabbing an enemy hostile who had infiltrated the organization by being a doppelganger for the director. He was to be renditioned 'with extreme prejudice'.

Maybe I should have felt hesitation, or at least ambivalence about lowering myself to his level, but after thinking about what that son of a bitch did to me. Destroying my life and God knows how many others, any trepidation lasted less than an instant. I felt no desire for vengeance. But I was completely bereft of any sympathy or compassion for this brutal sociopath.

“Sir. Supplemental orders.” The young man sitting next to the van driver handed the LCD back through the panel.

“About time.” The commander keyed in the decryption code. “Son of a BITCH!”

He addressed the 5 commandos riding with him in the back.

“Looks like we've got ourselves a mole.” He scowled.

He explained about the imposter masquerading as the director. How he didn't know his cover was blown, and would act like the actual director. How C&C uncovered the deception, and how he was to be brought back for extreme debrief at all costs. The rest of his crew simply nodded. No matter how outlandish their mission, they were trained and drilled to follow orders. Understanding things was above their paygrade.