Mary Pat replied, “Those are statistical projections of where the truck might be going. The numbers at the end of each branch represent the mathematical probability of that path being taken. MAADN considers not only the possible physical routes, but also the suspected intentions of the vehicle operators, things like fuel stops, potential threats, and likely destinations.”
As they all watched, the amber tree suddenly shifted. A solid red triangle appeared ten miles in front of the GAZ.
“What happened?” van Damm asked.
The President said, “I think MAADN just realized that Task Force 99 is still in pursuit.”
Mary Pat surmised, “And the red marker is the projected end of the road?”
“Let’s hope,” the President replied.
—
Four miles south, across the Anacostia River, Kyle Ryan was ignoring the feed that had the White House Situation Room engrossed. His team had spent most of the day fine-tuning MAADN for the ongoing mission in Turkey. They’d been following that situation closely, but twenty minutes earlier they were sidetracked by a parallel search.
MAADN was, at the very essence of its digital architecture, an expert in multitasking. For all the processing power spent synchronizing intelligence to support Task Force 99, it had also been silently pursuing another task: the hunt for the missing passenger on SAM 719.
The AI algorithms attacked the problem in reverse chronology. MAADN began by acquiring the weight and balance paperworkfor the flight, verifying that, despite being manifested for sixteen passengers, only fifteen had boarded in Tangier. This was double-checked using a running hack on the Moroccan Customs and Excise Administration, courtesy of the NSA, which showed that fifteen passports had been scanned prior to departure. Closed-circuit camera footage from the boarding area, pirated from the local airport authority, further substantiated the identities of all fifteen passengers and crew using facial and somatic recognition.
The process of elimination was a beautiful thing. All that remained was to research the one manifested passenger who had not boarded.
“How should we approach it?” Moose prompted, his fingers poised over a keyboard. Craterly was in the lobby collecting their DoorDash dinner—it was Thai takeout night.
Kyle said, “The name on the manifest is the most obvious place to start.”
“Even if it’s an alias?”
“Especially if it’s an alias.”
Moose typed in “Ronald Hauptman.”
A reply came almost instantly. A false passport under that name had recently been generated by the CIA’s Technical Services Division.
“See what I mean?” Kyle said.
“Okaaay…” Moose replied.
“But that does complicate things.”
“Why? We have access to CIA servers—we wouldn’t have seen this if we didn’t.”
“True, but it’s limited. Most of what wecan’taccess is in the Directorate of Operations. If this is an ongoing op, anything specific on this alias would be in the most sensitive tier.”
“We could probablygetaccess. Heck, the White House is glued to our feed as we speak.”
“I know, but there might be an easier way. This passport has to be part of a legend, and TSD is methodical. They’ll have seeded previous travel for this identity into immigration systems, most likely in Europe. If we can dig into a few and get a photo, vitals, a nationality…”
Moose nodded. “I see where you’re going.” He made the inputs.
A search on European passport databases in the name Ronald Hauptman produced sixteen hits.
“Sort it by issuance date,” Kyle said, “newest to oldest.”
Again, the results were quick.
Moose said, “Two of them were issued within the last two months. All the others are eight months old or more.”
“Got to be one of those.”
