Decision Point. Don Pendleton

he figured you’d probably spot something faster than one of his analysts.”

       Peterson scanned the document once more, then highlighted several transactions. “Can you run a search and correlate on these?” she asked.

       He nodded and entered the command for the search function to cross-reference against known terrorist organizations and matching institutions.

       “There it is,” she said.

       The small screen displayed the information for a political action committee located in the Washington, D.C., area called TPAC. Bolan traced his finger and spun the image back his way and sent out an immediate search for known contributors to TPAC and any connections to known members of the LTTE. While the search was running, a secondary search recorded a media alert. Bolan tapped the icon and an article appeared on the screen, with a man’s name and picture. Tim Wright.

       “Oh, that’s right,” Peterson said. “I saw that come across the wire this morning. This guy was supposed to be an amazing programmer and he was murdered last night. Everyone was talking about it because they say he was the best.”

       “People always say that when someone dies,” Bolan replied. “It’s human nature to be complimentary to people once they’re dead.”

       “In this case, I guess the praise is deserved. There are some people at pretty high levels of defense trying to figure out how his work is going to be completed, let alone continued. He’s one of those Rain Man types that can look at a piece of code and tell you how to get the recipe for grandma’s cookies or in this case crack just about any computer in the world.”