The Master Hacker

Chapter Four

The man sitting behind the desk, one of the Chinese Central Committee members named Wang Yunshan, read the report twice and finally looked up at the man who had handed it to him.

“So basically, what the report says is we don’t know anything. There are 10 bodies at a crash site in North Korea, one of our planes was shot down, a prototype of an anti-missile system to protect that country, and ultimately ours once final testing was completed, has been destroyed, and we don’t know how this happened or who’s responsible.”

The individual facing the desk fidgeted nervously under the gaze of his superior.

“We found enough pieces of the missile to know it was a Russian Strela-2, but don’t think the Russians had anything to do with the downing. As far as we know, they had nothing to gain by committing such an act, and that particular missile is available to warring factions throughout most of the developing world. For the right price and with the proper connection, just about anybody who wants one can get one.”

“That’s all we know?” the seated man roared.

“The missile was somehow attached to a computer that fired the weapon, but everything was destroyed by an explosive charge after the device fired, and it’s impossible to recover any data from what’s left of it.”

The ranking man was beginning to realize the downing of the plane was not a haphazard act with little thought, but a well-executed plan to destroy the anti-missile system. Given what little information he had, it’s the only thing that made sense.

“Who knew what was being transported on the plane, keeping in mind the individual would also have to have known the plane’s destination?” he finally asked.

“We haven’t yet been able to compile a list of individuals who would have had that knowledge, but my whole team is working around the clock to determine who could have committed such a heinous act,” the nervous man said.

“Once you come up with a complete list, account for every one on it. I suspect one of them will be missing and, if so, I believe that individual is the one you should focus your efforts on. Because so much time has passed since the plane’s downing, the person who committed this crime may already be out of the country. You need to make this investigation your priority.”

Once SunHee cleared the official arrival check point inside the Kuwaiti airport she relaxed a bit, but knew she still had a long way to go before reaching her destination in the U.S.

Her escape plan involved a number of objectives she had to achieve before she could reach her goal, and getting through the Kuwaiti airport without problems was one of them. As it turned out, other than a casual glance by the passport agent, no one appeared to have any interest in her whatsoever.

After a cursory check at the custom’s counter, she was one step away from her biggest hurdle: passing the scrutiny of agents allowing access to the departure area for the U.S.

She chose to fly on KLM Airlines because she had never used that carrier in the past. It was important to avoid doing anything that might look like a pattern in order to make it more difficult to be tracked by those she knew would try to find her. Her immediate concern was about how carefully the airline’s agents checked passenger documentation.

She needn’t have worried.

When it was her turn at the counter, she smiled and flirted a bit with the agent, and that turned out to be enough to earn her passage into the waiting area without any trouble.

The plane crash she caused happened two days previously, but other than a minor blurb on the news, no special interest seemed to be shown toward the incident. She knew this was probably how the incident was being handled publicly, not privately, and felt an urgency to get away from this part of the world as soon as possible.

Sitting in the waiting area put her one step closer to reaching the end of her goal, but she didn’t seem to be able to completely relax until she boarded the plane. Once seated, she realized she’d be in a cage for the next 15-20 hours before reaching JFK in New York, and there was nothing she could do but wait until the plane arrived at its destination to continue with her escape plan.

Although she knew she had a two-day head start, she also knew there was a good chance officials in both China and North Korea would be looking for her by the time the plane landed in New York. That thought caused her to rub her right forearm where a tracking device had been implanted after one of her prior trips to the U.S. Removing the tracker was a must, and she wasn’t looking forward to the task.

After considering operating on herself in one of the plane’s bathrooms, she decided that any turbulence could cause more problems than slicing open her arm with a razor blade and removing the bug with her fingers. She quickly decided it would be best to perform the surgery in a hotel room after she cleared the airport, but that would be almost four days since her departure from North Korea. Even though she knew that was the best thing to do, given the circumstances in which she found herself, she realized that was more than enough time for the people who would be looking for her to get on her trail.

From previous visits to the U.S., she had learned her cousin worked as a translator for a company that sometimes did work for the government, and hoped that would provide an opening for finding someone she could talk to about what was going on inside North Korea and China.

This act of treason would make her a hated person by many of the people inside her homeland, but she knew she had to do something to try to stop the destruction the two countries were instigating.

The flight was long and she remained nervous and apprehensive the whole trip, but she immediately began to relax once the airliner touched down at JFK.

After clearing customs and immigration without any problem, she stopped at a cell-phone kiosk and purchased a cheap one she could use to make a few calls before throwing it away.

Once she bought the phone, she went to the car rental counter where she picked up the vehicle she had reserved earlier. It turned out to be a very non-descript, gray sedan that few people would ever remember seeing. It was exactly what she wanted.

With her luggage stowed in the trunk, she headed southwest away from the city toward New Jersey, but avoided the Turnpike because of the cameras that would record her progress along it.

It seemed like forever after the long flight, but she finally drove across the border into Delaware, picked up I-95 South, and headed for a motel near Elkton, Maryland, where she had already booked a room for the night.

Once she checked into the motel, she drove to a nearby shopping center where she could buy everything she needed to preform her self-surgery. She dreaded the idea of operating on herself, but knew she had to do it as soon as possible because the tracking device also contained a poison that could be triggered remotely to kill her. The fact that the poison hadn’t yet been activated surprised her, but she knew her luck wouldn’t last much longer.

When she completed her shopping, she returned to her room and laid out her purchases, then steeled herself for what she had to do next. The thought that something could go wrong during the procedure prompted her to call her uncle not only to tell him she was in the country and hoped to visit him, but also because she just wanted to hear his voice one more time in case something went wrong.

SunHee’s conversation with her uncle was short, but a bit strained and cautious. Even so, once completed, she felt a calm come over her that seemed to say: “It’s OK. You’re safe now.”

After returning her cell-phone to her purse, she turned up the volume on the radio enough to hopefully cover any screams she might utter, but not loud enough to disturb the guests in other rooms.

It was time.

Following the instructions she had researched on her computer, she used almost a whole can of numbing spray on her arm before putting a sterile rubber glove on her other hand. She picked up the razor blade lying on the sink, and being careful not to cut any major blood vessels, quickly sliced her arm open over the lump she felt inside. Reaching into the opening, she grasped the embedded object and pulled it out of her arm. There was not as much blood as she had anticipated, so she was readily able to stem any flow with gauze pads. The last step before wrapping the arm in a bandage was to use butterfly sutures to close the wound. When everything was done, she wiped the sweat from her forehead and tried to control her shaking hand, but she knew it was nothing more than tension – or possibly the release of it.

With the surgery complete, she swallowed some pain pills, turned off the TV and lights, and went to bed with the hope that a good night’s sleep would help her deal with the exhaustion she was beginning to feel.