The First Deadly Sin

You have to be particularly incompetent, or stupid, to weave the net that you subsequently get caught in. But that was just the usual DC business, of the right hand, not knowing what the left one was doing.

The various intelligence agencies had scooped up the necessary evidence as part of the "war on terror," and then they stored it in the Bumblehive because governments like their paperwork. Chelsea was able to plant the backdoor there, because the NSA is expert in electronic security, not the kind that protects it from its own employees. Edward Snowdon is living proof of THAT.

It took a massive amount of compute power to tease the real picture out of all the background noise. None of THAT would have been possible if Chelsea Hughes-Meissner hadn't used the 50-million slave computers in the Red Dragon's botnet to process exabytes of data.

Her zombie computers, were a perfect illustration of why it is a bad idea to click on unknown links. Because, THAT'S how you JOIN a botnet.

Of course, the power of the Red Dragon's botnet made this beautiful little woman one of the most dangerous people on earth. Chelsea Hughes-Meissner could drop huge corporations, or even whole Countries, to their knees; all of that from the comfort of her hard-to-extradite home.

She could wreak havoc on any computerized system, anywhere; Using her botnet. That included things like the automated systems that controlled a country's infrastructure, or military hardware.

The scheme that we uncovered was basically a variation of the Fat Leonard scam. The Naval Support Activity Bahrain was the crime-scene, not Singapore.

Naval Support Activity Bahrain is home to U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and United States Fifth Fleet. It is the primary base for naval operations in the Persian Gulf.

A host of contractors support the massive U.S. naval presence there. So, the reprovisioning business, serves up billions in pork. Hence, there is always an unseemly stampede among the contractors to see who can jam their snout farthest into the trough.

I suppose I don't need to tell you who one of those contractors was? There was a lot of money involved and Bennett Minor was making it hand-over-fist. He had recouped everything he lost in the divorce and more.

The deal was simple. Bennett was wired in from the top, even though Bennett the elder wasn't directly involved in the scam. Every quartermaster, Admiral and ship commander knew the name. So, they were more than happy to play along, when Bennet the Younger approached them with $25,000 watches, $2,000 boxes of cigars and thousand-dollar-a-night hookers.

All Bennet wanted in return was a little information about the courses and mission objectives of the ships deployed to the Gulf. Knowing that in advance would let Bennett, "Serve the Navy better," when it came to the positioning of fuel, services and other material.

And, it would be a special favor in return, if the recipients of Bennett's largess made sure that their ships arrived where and when he wanted them to. That would give him a huge jump on his competition, but that was beside the point, wink-wink. It's standard operating procedure for government contractors to put their thumb on the scale.

Naturally, all that tactical information was classified. That was for good reason. Knowing what the Navy was up to would tip the U.S.'s hand to every potential evil-doer in the Gulf. And, providing that information would end the career of the Captains and Admirals who accepted Bennett's "favors."

The problem was that Bennett's clandestine bribery scheme was the worst kept secret in the entire Fifth Fleet. Not much gets past the people who live in that ancient nexus of cultures. Consequently, Bennett's activities were well known to the indigenous population.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a mere 400 miles away on the other side of the Gulf from Naval Support Activity Bahrain. For obvious reasons, it considers the American naval presence in the Gulf threatening at best, and an act of war at worst. So, it is always plotting ways to disrupt, as well as endanger American ships.

The VAJA realized that the positioning and movement data for American ships would be an intelligence bonanza. So, they fired up their best agent to get it.

The U.S. uses technology to get the dirt on their business, diplomatic, or political targets. The Russians do it the old-fashioned way; meaning, pussy. They know that any guy will give it up for the right inducement. It just has to be persuasive enough.

As a result, Russia has surreptitiously made film-stars out of every mover-and-shaker who's ever visited their glorious Worker's Paradise. Holding that card gave them a lot of blackmail leverage.

Ekaterina Seminova was a true Russian beauty, twenty-six years old and literally engineered from the ground up to seduce secrets out of men. The little surgeries to create that face and body were masterful. The years of training in seduction and the bedroom arts were more rigorous than the Spetsnaz endure to earn their place in the ranks of Russia's Special Forces.

Word had it that Bennett was constantly horney. So, the FSB was more-than happy to loan their deadliest asset to the Iranians. And Kat Seminova targeted Bennett like she was a cruise missile and he was downtown Pyongyang.

Bennett had no concept of how dangerous Kat Seminova was. A narcissist like him is always susceptible to self-delusion. So, he honestly believed that this superb beauty was put there to please him. The thought never entered his mind that it wasn't his slick skillset and his money that had attracted this incredible woman into his bed. He simply viewed her as his greatest conquest; self-validating proof of his enduring manhood

Bennet was regularly committing treason, by the time Kat Seminova was done with him. He was doing that by openly sharing his ill-gotten tactical information with her. He did it to impress her with his worldliness. I mean... What would be the harm, since she was just a pussy?

Of course, that pussy was supplying her VAJA masters with high-grade intelligence, which was allowing the Revolutionary Guard to make U.S. ships miserable. It seemed like every day, routine littoral patrols were being harassed by swarms of fast-attack-boats, as well as dangerously positioned commercial shipping.

The Iranian actions were getting so prescient that people in the Navy's National Maritime Intelligence Center began to see a pattern. It looked like somebody was passing the Persians classified information about locations and courses.

Since it was the Iranians, the Navy turned the matter over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Bennett started to feel the heat when NCIS Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo showed up at his office.

It was a preliminary fact-finding visit, nothing more; just to touch base with the big operations, but it freaked Bennett out. He was smart enough to see that the people at NCIS might figure out that the information could ONLY have come from him. Obviously, he wasn't going to admit that to anybody. So, it prompted a call to daddy.

His old man wasn't pleased. However, daddy was willing to help him, since Bennett swore that he was only trying to get a competitive advantage. Bennett Senior was no more righteous than any other major player in the DC space. To him, concepts like ethics and morality are always in the eye of the beholder, and his idiot son was still his kid. So, Bennett called in his "fixer" to make the problem go away.

Captain Bob Roberts might have been a man with two first names, but he was ruthlessly single-minded in his devotion to the fellow who had put him in his undeserving position. His only role at JCS was to "fix" things for his boss.

Roberts was a guy with a lot of contacts on the seamy side of clandestine operations. He learned from those contacts that the investigation was proceeding along the lines of Iranian espionage. He needed to find a fall-guy; one with the right access to the information and Iranian connections.

He knew who the real perpetrator was. Bennett Senior, had told him that. So, Bob Roberts had to set somebody ELSE up to get the NCIS investigators off Bennett Junior's tail.

That's the reason why, he tasked the Office of Personnel Management to work with the CIA to identify a sailor with intelligence responsibility in Naval Support Activity Bahrain's patch and Iranian ties. The guy at the top of THAT list was Commander William Hughes.

Both Bennett's considered THAT news a rare, unexpected bonus. There is nothing more satisfying than getting payback while covering your OWN ass.

After the divorce, Billy had been reassigned to the Nimitz Operational Intelligence Center in Suitland, Maryland. A change of venue seemed like a wise move after the shit had hit the fan at his old posting.

Fortunately, Billy's focused, analytic mind made him particularly excellent at strategic intelligence. In fact, he was so good that he was reassigned as the Naval case officer for Iran at the U.S. Embassy in London. That was where he met Samreen Esfahan. Unfortunately, she just happened to have impeccable Republican Guard credentials. The frame fit so neatly that it was almost too good to be true.

It was everything Roberts needed to tie the whole mess up in a neat little package. He began to subtly connect the dots for the investigators. As a JCS staffer, he could read-in CIA and the Pentagon with respect to his suspicions. The evidence looked damning.

He tossed that bone to Lieutenant General Reynolds. Roberts knew that Reynolds was a numbskull, but he also knew that he could count on Reynolds following the trail without exercising the slightest bit of critical thinking.

Military intelligence was now chasing after the wrong quarry. Bennett Senior, whose hands were as dirty as his underling, called Bennett Junior and told him in no-uncertain terms that this was the very last time he would save his bacon.

None of the players had considered the possibility that all of those conversations were intercepted, recorded and stored. It still wouldn't have been a problem, unless a set of utterly unlikely conditions hadn't been present.

First, the hounds would have to suspect they were pursuing the wrong prey. They would have to be able to call on the help of the one individual who could access all the damning evidence. And finally, that individual would have to have the compute power to winnow through an impossible array of data, to find and document the smoking gun.

That implausible set of conditions was beyond anybody's reckoning. So, the matter was considered settled, and all was well with the world.

*****

Billy Hughes and I were sitting on one side of a long mahogany table. It was in a briefing room attached to the Senate Armed Services Committee Offices. There was one other person with us. She was perhaps the hottest sixty-year-old woman I had ever met.

I could see where Chelsea got her looks and her outrageous figure. The woman might be a grandmother, but she was still, world-class gorgeous. She was looking at her son with a mixture of intense love, and righteous indignation.

The mom, whose name was Maddie Hughes, was only a couple of inches taller than her daughter, but she radiated sexuality, Thick dark auburn hair, huge intelligent eyes, a mouth that was almost lascivious and a body that was an hour-and-a-half glass voluptuous.

It wasn't her unquestioned sex appeal that drew you to her. Maddie Hughes was a true force of nature. Her own daughter and my beloved partner Kelly were the only two women who rivaled her for sheer animal magmatism. You could almost feel the air crackle around her.

Maddie Hughes was very womanly, in a dark attractive way, but there was no mistaking that there was steel underneath. And Maddie Hughes was royally pissed. I imagine you would be too, if you had just learned that your own government had tried to frame your favorite son for treason.

Sitting opposite us was the Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The distinguished Senator from Maryland was a close personal friend of Maddie Hughes. Sitting next to him was the Secretary of Defense. So, the Executive Branch was represented too.

Political kingmakers like Maddie Hughes can get meetings with important people, just by picking up the phone. Politicians, being the opportunistic souls that they are, understand the value of friendship; especially when that friendship is with big donors. That's because those donors can make a fortune appear in your campaign coffers, or in your rival's. It just depends on how pleased they are with you.

Both men wanted Maddie Hughes to be very pleased.

They both looked a little dazed. Maddie had just finished playing a fifteen-minute, "greatest hits" compilation of phone conversations that nailed down the shenanigans behind the framing of her son. Each of the culprits was heard in their own words; standing over the corpse, smoking gun in hand, shouting, "I did it."

The sheer political juju that those recordings represented was awe-inspiring. We had spent days putting that recording together. Politicians have short attention spans. So, we had to make it easy for them to understand just how deep into the shit they were. Maddie Hughes had the Department of Defense by the balls and everybody in the room knew it.

The Secretary of Defense was a partisan street-fighter. He understood what this meant, but he had to give it the old college-try. He said, "Where did you get this? Can you verify any of it?"

Maddie laughed in his face. She said, "We both know it was hacked from Bluffdale. So obviously, I can't reveal the source, but let me assure you that it's the real-deal and we have hours of it."

Then she leaned back languidly in her chair. It was like she was thinking about something. I noted that there was still very little sag in her huge tits. Don't judge me!! All men are hounds.

She said idly, "I suppose I could give all this to CNN and the Post? THEY have the investigative resources to confirm it."

Both the Senator and the Secretary smiled. Players admire another player. The secretary said, "What will it take to make this go away forever?"

Maddie said, with a serious look on her face, "This is a major abuse of power. Don't you think that the people of this great Country deserve to know?" The table erupted in laughter. Everybody appreciated Maddie Hughes delightful sense of humor.

So, the die was cast. The treason frame was surreptitiously removed from around Billy Hughes's neck. The mass of incriminating evidence led to a major purge of Navy ranks. Nobody in the Fourth Estate could figure out what was going on at DoD, but they dutifully covered the retirements and demotions.

At that point, at least four Admirals, sixteen Navy Captains and a member of the Joint Chief Staff were in the net and that was only scratching the surface. The real perpetrator, Bennett, was ALREADY going down for a very long time, but he was a nobody.

As fate would have it, Bill Hughes Senior's strange first encounter with Maddie Wilson, at that party all those many years ago, would ripple through many lives.

EPILOGUE

The SecDef handled the purge in true Stalinist fashion. Bennett Senior was forced into retirement. His undeserving pension depended on him keeping his mouth shut.

McCarthy got to see what happens when you are on the other side of an abuse of power. He was disappeared along with all of his staff. They had the devil of a time finding equivalent jobs after that.

Reynolds lost a star and retired as a Major General. Falling just one star short of career high-country might have been the unkindest cut of all.

Bennett Junior didn't get the sentence he deserved. It was impossible to convict him on the espionage charge. Since, the phone conversations had been illegally obtained. But it was easy to convict him on bribery and conspiracy-to-defraud charges. He took a plea and then proceeded to sing like a gay little chickadee.

So, the Navy dropped a number of other similar indictments.

Bennett is doing seven years at FPC Alderson, colloquially known as "Camp Cupcake." A super-max might have been a better choice, strictly for his own self-protection. The people he implicated didn't take kindly to being ratted-out.

Suzy wasn't disciplined like Billy was. She simply couldn't deny herself. She probably didn't realize what a killer defect that was, until after the divorce. It didn't change her subsequent behavior, her beauty faded as one-marriage-after-another failed. And in the end, she was just another aging slut.

On the other hand, Billy was promoted to Captain. The problem was that, he had soured on the Navy, and every other form of government service.

Billy was an intelligent guy. He spent a lot of hours in self-reflection. He finally realized that projecting his own values on other people was a fatal weakness. He had led his life honorably, believing that everybody around him would instinctively be honorable. That was how he was raised.

In the end, his strong moral upbringing had created a true Officer and Gentleman, but it had also built a serious flaw into his game. It was that blind-spot that had led him to trust his wife Suzy. After all, they had made a pledge to be true. Billy now realized how naïve he really was. He just couldn't see the evil that lurked in people's hearts. He knew he had to be with people who shared his values and government work just didn't cut it.

Billy knew that it was a matter of finding the right person and that was a crapshoot, but it starts with being honest with yourself. Billy finally got lucky meeting Samreen Esfahan.

Samreen was even more sexually alluring than Suzy, but she was much smarter. She understood herself. She knew what her strengths and weaknesses were, and her self-concept demanded that she lead her life in a decent and honorable way.

That was all it took to make her a perfect match for Billy. Their exceptional children were raised with the same values. How could the two of them NOT produce beautiful and accomplished kids?

After they married, they went to work for Billy's, Aunt Millie. It was purely volunteer work. They had plenty of money. That was because, for some reason the Pentagon had given Billy the full thirty-year pension. Neither Billy, or Samreen, guessed the reason for their windfall. It was just as well they hadn't. It would have been disillusioning, and they were both still idealists.

They found their real calling in, "Doctors Without Borders." With Billy's organizational abilities and Samreen's natural people skills, they brought a lot of peace and happiness to some very unpleasant third-world places. The spiritual reward for that work paid them back in spades. It was what they had both been seeking all along

Billy's sister Chelsea continues to live in luxurious peace and contentment on the Island of St. Lucia. However, a new and even more fearsome hacker presence, called the Red Dragon Gurlz, has appeared on the darkweb. Oddly enough it only seems to target teenage gossip sites.

You ask about Kelly and me? Well, absolutely nothing has changed. She is the same kickass, smart-mouth she always was. We do our best for our clients and we live a happy life together in our place down by Navy Pier.

We DID do a quickie wedding over one lunch hour. It was no big deal. Now we are even talking about kids. Between Kelly's feisty attitude and my thug nature our offspring will probably be the Antichrist.

I was a lone-wolf for so long that I still can't believe that I'm not by myself anymore. It is comforting to know that there is one person in the world who would die for me. I hope she understands the same thing applies to her. Oh yeah, and the sex is still spectacular.