Krumm hadn’t had much time to mess with it, but he decided it would be a good day to test his ability to connect to his server back in the US. A friend of his who ran the program at one of the big universities had set up an account for him on a powerful Unix machine in the bowels of the Computer Science lab.
He also didn’t want to risk using the broadband provided by the military, so he carried his laptop down to an Internet cafe close to the mosque. After greeting a couple of acquaintances, he said something about needing to do some work. He took his coffee and sat in an isolated booth. Their Internet service was not really that fast, but within a few moments he was logged in to the server on an encrypted link, using an unusual port assignment.
Since he had not written anything on his blog in over a month, he didn’t expect much email. One message jumped out at him — it said it was from “Charley Jones.” He opened it immediately.
I hope you will remember my joke about names and not delete this message. As with most honest men, you have made yourself easy to find on the Net. I don’t have a lot of time to explain, but I suggest you make sure your bunker is ready for your friends to stay in for a few days, perhaps a week. For yourself, I want you to visit the bike shop again. The owner has something for you. Ask about an upgrade. Sorry for the silly cloak and dagger, but I can’t be sure who else will see this.
Sabaz Khan
Something big was coming, but that wasn’t any great surprise. Would it show up in back channel news site? His account on the Unix machine permitted a plain text browser for reading websites via this connection. He quickly scanned and found, yes, the lack of air coverage had truly hurt military progress throughout the entire theater. Even the CIA drones were grounded. The US had managed to secure the nukes in Pakistan, but the situation was otherwise very unstable. As he had expected, troops had been shifted to the Iranian border, and everyone knew what that meant. Most of it was not really news.
He was almost ready to give up when something caught his eye on one of the low traffic sites. It was the word “heroin.” He knew the CIA had been protecting the Afghan poppy crop to fund off-budget activities, and some very potent black tar had been shipped recently through Mexico into the US. What caught his eye was the notice of a sudden drop in supply. Not coming into the US, but the stockpiling in Mexico had nearly stopped, according to a retired expat there who had contacts with a drug ring.
There was only one thing which would reduce the heroin supply coming out of Afghanistan: The Taliban were taking over the areas where it was grown. It must be a fine time to carry out a major attack. Krumm wasn’t exactly sure where the battle lines had been recently, but he had a feeling the front wasn’t that far away. He left hurriedly.
It took only a few minutes for the bike shop owner to lead Krumm into a back room. There was the old man he had met a few days before. This time the shop keeper translated. The gentleman wanted to suggest a plan.
It didn’t take too long to explain, which was a good thing, because Krumm figured it might not be too easy to convince his co-workers.
