Matt Griffin quickly proceeded to devour four bagels and then started in on a large bag of corn chips Kira had given him. Desh released the giant from his bonds while crumbs rained onto his head at a steady pace.
Once Griffin had been restored to full freedom, the entire group gathered around him as best they could in the tight space. “My superhuman alter ego may not win any Miss Congeniality awards,” he said, “but he sure was a God of the cyber domain. Allow me to demonstrate.” Griffin hit a few keys and a satellite photo came up on one of the monitors. It showed a central residence and two small, red barns, contained within the expansive grounds. The house was nestled among several mature trees. About thirty yards from the house a number of tiny horses could be identified milling about inside a fenced-in area about the size of a football field.
“This is the Sam Putnam residence,” explained Griffin.
“He lives on a farm?” said Kira in surprise.
“A small one,” said Griffin. “And he doesn’t actually farm anything. But he does have eight horses and two barns.”
“A perfect layout for him,” noted Desh. “It lets him be isolated from near neighbors without seeming to be a recluse. He’s just a rugged outdoorsman. And while the farm must have been expensive, it isn’t showy enough to make anyone wonder how he could afford it.”
“And the isolation leaves open numerous options for security,” added Metzger.
“Where is it?” asked Kira.
Griffin worked the mouse and zoomed out, showing the scene from a far higher altitude. Putnam’s farm disappeared. As if by magic, a map with borders and place names was overlaid onto the satellite image. Griffin pointed at the center of the screen. “Putnam lives here,” he said. “In Severn Maryland.”
The town was directly between Washington to the southwest and Baltimore to the northeast. It was at most fifteen minutes away from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade.
While the group studied the map, Griffin pulled up a page of information about the town and left it on the adjacent monitor. Severn had been a small rural town for most of its existence, but in the past several decades it had seen explosive growth given its proximity to D.C. and Baltimore and the growth of the government, including the NSA. While much of the town was originally zoned as rural farmland, the vast majority of land had now be rezoned for residential purposes. Putnam owned one of the few remaining properties that could be designated as a farm.
Griffin changed the view of Putnam’s property, zooming in to give the view from about a hundred feet overhead. “He has enough video cameras blanketing the property that there are virtually no blind spots. They all feed into two separate banks of monitors, one bank inside his bedroom and the other,” he said, pointing to the barn that was the farthest from the residence, “inside here.”
Griffin moved the view a few hundred yards from the residence and zoomed in until a relatively unassuming fence came into view. “This is a chain-link fence, ten feet high, completely encircling the periphery of the property,” he announced. “It looks innocent enough—almost inviting. No razor wire, no electricity. But don’t be fooled. It has vibration sensors. Try to climb over it or cut through it and your exact location is revealed.”
Griffin showed a closer view of the main dwelling. “There’s a microwave perimeter exactly twenty feet out from the house. Break the beam and once again Putnam will know about it.” He raised his eyebrows. “Presupposing you could get over the first fence without any alarms going off, and he didn’t see you on the monitors.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Metzger.
“He has a very advanced system,” explained Griffin. “He has a computer devoted just to home security, and this is tied into the Internet. That way, anyone with the proper codes can check all of the video feeds and security monitors from any computer.”
“And you hacked into this computer?” said Kira.
“Yes. And reprogrammed it while I was inside,” said Griffin proudly. “For the next twenty-four hours the system will ignore certain inputs. Cut through the fence and break the microwave barrier and the system won’t notice. The video monitors are set to show the same benign view of the estate on a continual basis.”
Desh scratched his head. “It doesn’t make sense to have a security system online that’s vulnerable to what you just did,” he said.
“I agree,” said Griffin. “But it isn’t vulnerable. A top-drawer hacker could hack into the system and identify what security safeguards are in place. But anyone skilled at storming this kind of heavily protected castle could do that in other ways. But reprogramming it the way I did simply isn’t possible with normal human faculties. Trust me on this one.”