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Chapter 44 - Counter Surveillance

After their nature-birding walk, Tamara returned with the girls and they chatted for a while; then the older cousins said that they wanted to go to the pool. Barbara stopped by and told her that Terence and Peter had met a few other guys and were shooting hoops on the basketball court.

“Good; he’s keeping occupied,” Tamara told her. “I need to check my email to see if the patent lawyers have anything for me to answer.”

“Fine. See you at the pool later?”

“Yep. Be there as soon as I can. I need to track Ron down too, about the drone problem.”

“Good. Don’t do anything illegal, remember,” Barbara admonished her.

“Yes, mother,” Tamara chuckled.

Barbara snorted and walked away.

Tamara checked her messages and indeed found several about the two patent applications she had in the works. After working on her reply and sending it off, she looked at the FAA site to see what it said about drones, then went to several manufacturers’ sites. When she finished, she closed up and left for the pool area. On the way, she saw Ron riding toward the campground area in a golf cart, so she flagged him down.

“What’s up, Tamara?”

“Hi, Ron. This morning, Barbara told me that I should ask you about the drone problem. I have a few ideas about what to do about it.”

“I’m all ears, Tamara. I found out a little while ago that the bozo is posting stills and videos from our resort on a voyeur website. I’ve got Gary, um, Detective Lynch, coming by tomorrow at 11 a.m. to discuss the problem. So far, we’re stymied.”

“So I guess it doesn’t have any ID you can see.”

“That’s a major problem; it doesn’t. And Gary told me that it should have a radio ID beacon too. Last year when we were trying to find the owner, most drones didn’t have the beacon because it wasn’t part of the rules and for older drones, it was an add-on. I’m not sure about the rules this year, whether it has to have an ID beacon now.”

“I looked at the rules. It should now. What’s the thing look like?”

“Well, it’s a typical drone. Kinda big. Maybe eighteen inches across, has four rotors, and a fairly big camera underneath. And there are four legs that mount on two skids for feet. The guests who spotted it didn’t pay much attention to it ‘cause many thought that we were running it. But we have to stop it from coming; our guests’ privacy is at risk. You want to meet with us and explain your idea?”

“Sure. I’ll bring Peter too. And when we meet, if you have an old electronic gadget you no longer need, please bring it—or ask the sergeant if he has something that he wouldn’t mind getting damaged.”

“Really, Tamara? Your idea doesn’t involve wrecking the drone, I hope. We can’t shoot the thing down, you know.”

“Not doing that. No shots will be fired in anger,” she chuckled. “I’m working on a device that I think might be useful for the Defense Department that I could use. And this’ll be a good field trial.”

“Shit, girl, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Okay, it’s just an idea and if the sergeant says no go, then I’ll drop it. But it looks like the drone is being operated illegally.”

“It is. Well, just come tomorrow. Thanks.”

He drove away, shaking his head and Tamara continued on to the pool. The entire extended Winsberg family was there now and so was a large number of others who Tamara didn’t know. She found out that these were long-time resort members who all had been coming to the resort for their August vacations for many years. After a round of introductions, people began getting their lunches out or buying their lunch from the lunch stand. After lunch they organized some spirited water volleyball games that went on for over an hour.

Afterward, Tamara spent some time socializing with the people she had met and chatting with the college-aged cousins. Then she decided that she had work to do and looked for Peter. She found him talking with a few of his parents’ friends, mostly the parents of the “rugrats” posse. They were telling Peter about how their daughters’ crushes on him was keeping them amused. Peter introduced Tamara to them and then excused himself.

“Tamara needs to talk to me... I see it in her expression,” he told them, grinning. “Let’s go, sweetie,” he said to her. “What’s up?”

“Lots of stuff. So early this morning, I spoke to Barbara while you and Terence were doing your manly things with the weights,” Tamara teased him. “She told me about the drone sightings last season. Then I saw Ron just before noon and he told me that the pictures from the drone are on some website now, too.”

“Yeah, I heard that too,” Peter said.

“When I saw him before, I told him that I have an idea how to stop it but both he and Barbara are dubious about whether it’s legal. Ron told me he called the detective; they’re meeting tomorrow and we’re going to be there too.”

“Um, ‘We’?”

“Yep. I want you there for moral support. Or immoral, whatever,” Tamara giggled. “I wanna ask the detective about my idea for stopping the drone and catching the guy.”

“Just how do you think you can do that?” Peter asked.

“You know that I was going on my computer earlier. I had some emails to take care of, but then I started researching drones. Let’s get back to the cabin and I’ll show you what I’m thinking.”

On the walk back, Tamara told him what she had learned when she was reading about the drones. When they got back to the cabin site, she took her backpack out of Barbara’s car.

“I need to make some adjustments to this gadget I’ve been playing with,” Tamara told him as they went into their cabin.

Tamara opened her backpack and pulled out what looked like a small infrared heater with a copper-colored reflector bowl on one side and a boxy shaped projection on the other. Then she produced a battery, meter, a toolbox, a box of parts, a little vacuum vise, and an IC soldering kit. Peter’s eyes bugged out.

“Honey, you don’t travel light, do you? What is all that stuff for?”

“Some time ago, I thought of a device that has possible military applications and I’ve been working on it at home. I don’t want it in Emma’s lab and I don’t want to leave it in the apartment when I’m not there; it’s too dangerous if someone finds it and messes around with it.”

“Damn, honey, what does it do?”

“So, it should be able to fry electronics at a distance of maybe a hundred feet, maybe more.”

“Jeez, that is dangerous. What does it do to electronics, exactly?”

“Makes a series of powerful EMF bursts, electromagnetic frequency radio and microwaves. I told you about how I zapped the RFID chips in Florida, remember?”

“Yeah...”

“So this is a kind of refinement of that. It’s somewhat frequency-tunable, has variable power, and uses the accumulator I invented as a power source so that there’s virtually no recovery time needed between pulses. I thought of using this against that drone. On those drone sites, I read that there are guns that shoot nets and ones that shoot RF to take down drones; but those gadgets are only for official, like government or military use, though. And I have this device right here; it probably can do the same, but in a much cruder way. Now I need to modify it a bit for the frequencies that the drone uses, so you can give me a hand with doing that, okay?”

Peter shrugged but sat down with her and assisted her, mainly by using the meter to tell her the power readings and frequencies her device was emitting as she adjusted its circuitry. After an hour and a half, she was satisfied with her adjustments so, thanking Peter, she packed her electronics shop back up into her backpack and stowed it in the bedroom.

People were beginning to return to the family site now to get dinner prepared, so Tamara and Peter joined them to help and soon everyone was enjoying a nice dinner.

This experience is just so awesome, Tamara thought at one point. I’m gonna hate it when it all ends. And to think—I haven’t even had a single thought—not one—about being nude, for days!

The rest of the evening was spent quietly. They had a fire ring set up in front of the main house and some of the guys started a campfire. The marshmallows, graham crackers, chocolates, and roasting sticks came out and everyone enjoyed roasting marshmallows and making s’mores.

When the fire died down, Tamara, Peter, and a few others visited the hot tub and spent the time discussing their plans for the coming school year and what they hoped to do after they graduated. Soon their yawns convinced them it was bedtime so they returned to their cabins to retire for the day.

~~~~

Tuesday was an overcast day. Rain threatened all morning but it didn’t deter the runners from getting their exercise. In fact, the cloud cover helped with keeping the heat from being bothersome, and the generally uncomfortable mid-Atlantic summer humidity this morning was more like Florida’s, Tamara thought. When the time for her meeting drew near, Tamara grabbed her backpack and with Peter, they set off for the office.

When Tamara and Peter got to the office, the detective was already there, talking to Ron. Both greeted the couple.

“Ron tells me that you have some kind of secret weapon to use on the drone,” Lynch said with a smile.

Tamara shook her head. “Um, not a weapon, it’s an electronic countermeasure device. The Defense Department already has a number of things like those but I thought of this gadget that I’m building when I heard about the drone problem.”

“That’s okay, I suppose,” Lynch responded. “Not a weapon, good. Anyway, Ron told me that the perp is posting photos and videos now. He was already violating the FAA flight rules. He’s not operating within line of sight and he’s flying it over groups of people. And now he’s violating their privacy rule. But we can’t just shoot it down; that’s illegal and dangerous too. We need to locate the perp and get him, not the device.”

“Yeah, I read about the FAA rules on their drone site,” Tamara said. “They have some pretty stiff penalties and I don’t want to get involved with any federal prosecution. Anyway, Peter told me that last year, the drone was flying at about treetop level, that it was first seen coming from one direction, and leaving the area in another. So we can’t backtrack it or project its flight path. What I propose doing is to confuse the thing and blind its navigation. Is that guy committing a crime, other than violating the FAA flight rules?”

Lynch replied, “Actually, yes. Taking photos like he’s doing violates the state’s ‘peeping tom’ law, in Maryland it’s called ‘visual surveillance with prurient intent.’ That law doesn’t require that the surveilled subjects be in an enclosed private place; any place where they expect that they won’t be photographed is considered private. And our laws also forbid any type of photographic surveillance by outsiders on property where a private residence is located, and on this resort, I know that there are many private residences. It’s illegal to use a camera to record an unsuspecting person on private property.”

“Okay, but I also don’t want to be in the position of breaking one law to catch another person who’s breaking other laws,” Tamara told him. “Apart from that, the things that the drone guy’s doing will have an economic impact on the resort, if word should get out that there’s an aerial voyeur who’s posting their pictures on the web. The gadget I’ll show you now could be a possible solution. This device will interfere with the electronics of the drone enough that it should be confused. One option would be to just zap the electronics to bring it down; but that would cause damage.”

“Really don’t want that,” Lynch said.

“Yeah, of course. Another would be to mess up its directions until the power runs out or it flies into a tree. I read that the more expensive drones will do an emergency landing when the power’s low.”

“That’s better, but it still violates FAA regs over interference with an aircraft,” Lynch told her.

“True, but cops break speeding laws when chasing a fleeing suspect, right?” Tamara grinned. “Law enforcement people have much more leeway in bending laws to apprehend someone who’s wilfully breaking others, right?”

“Huh. Lectured in police procedure by a civilian. Tamara, you’re right. What do you have cooked up?”

She put her backpack on the table and opened it, then pulled out the device she had worked on the previous day while Peter watched.

“I have several inventions that DARPA over in Arlington has licensed and this is an extension of one of them. Now I’ll need to trust you not to talk about this so I won’t bother with getting non-disclosure agreements from you all—and I can’t tell you exactly how the technology works ‘cause then you would have to sign an NDA. Essentially what it does is to make bursts of electromagnetic waves and they can disrupt electronics. It’s called an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. Kinda like what happens in a lightning strike, but not as dramatic. I’ve been playing with this device for a while and it works on the little circuits I’ve tested it on, but so far I’ve never tried it on a more complex device.”

“What does it do to electronics?” Ron asked.

“At high power it can fry electronics. Integrated circuits, things like microprocessors, are the most susceptible to damage. At lower power close by, or at higher power at extended distances, it can set up eddy currents—induced currents—that interfere with the device’s circuits’ operations. Ron, do you have something we can try it out on?”

“Yeah, I found an old cassette tape player. It still works, but of course it’s worthless; nobody uses them anymore. What will you do to it?”

“First, I’ll try scrambling it. The tape drive itself is mostly mechanical; a motor driving belts, I’m guessing, so quick EMP bursts won’t do much there, but I think I can affect the audio circuit. We need to do this outside ‘cause I don’t want to hurt any electronics in here. Sgt Gary, please leave your phone and radio in here. Any other electronics on you? I can see that Ron and Peter aren’t burdened with electronics—or anything else.”

They all laughed.

“How far is safe?” Lynch asked.

“Fifty feet from the building should be fine at the low power I’ll use first.”

She picked up her backpack and Ron took the cassette player and they walked over to a picnic table away from the building.

“Set it down there and turn it on,” she asked and Ron started the tape.

It was playing a tape from a 1990s rock music group. Tamara backed away about thirty feet and took out her contraption, pointed it toward the cassette player, and raised her hand. After a few seconds, the music began to waver in pitch with screeches, rumbles, and skips. She dropped her hand and the sound returned to normal. Tamara raised her hand again and the music went squirrely again.

“I like it better sounding like that,” Lynch joked. “Looks like your ray gun does mess with the electronics. And that was low power?”

“Pretty low. This thing fires rapid EMF bursts and I was slowly increasing the power until the player was affected. It’s at about 20 percent now.”

“You want to try the full power now?” Ron asked.

The player was again serenading them with the 1990s rock track.

“Not full,” Tamara said. “This thing’s power goes way high on a log scale and I don’t want to damage stuff nearby. At full, I think it could fry electronics at maybe 500 feet. And heat the electronics too, even melt the plastics.”

“Holy shit,” Lynch breathed. “We could put something like that in a patrol car and stop a perp before a high-speed chase gets started.”

Tamara laughed. “Needs more work. You’d fry the patrol car too. This looks like a reflector on the pulse generator, but it’s only partly effective. Twenty percent of the energy goes backward through it. Let me go to 35 percent power.”

The player stopped mid-wail in the soloist’s singing and a few seconds later, a tendril of gray smoke drifted out of the tape compartment.

“Ugh. That device is scary,” Lynch said. “If the perps got one, they could wipe out our radios and phones... I take back my comment about wanting one in patrol cars.”

“That’s why I asked you to keep this quiet,” Tamara said. “This one is going to the Defense Department; I’m not even bothering with a patent. It’s too dangerous.”

Ron had picked up the player and was looking at it.

“‘Fried’ is the operative word. I smell burnt electronics,” he said. “All right, Gary, is this something we can use to trap the drone guy? If this is like last year, he flies it on weekends in August and it goes over the campground, sports area, and pool.”

“When during the day?” Tamara asked.

“Early to mid-afternoon, last year,” Peter answered. “How are you going to do it?”

Tamara turned to Lynch. “Let’s say I confuse it enough that it comes down on the resort grounds. I’m guessing that the guy will come knocking, wanting it back...”

“Enough said,” Lynch told her. “Okay, Ron, let’s do this. Swear out another complaint against John Doe, address unknown, drone operator, for criminal trespass, like you did last year—you still have the ‘no drone’ signs around the property?”

“Sure do. They can be easily seen from the air, too.”

“Good. We’ll add this complaint to the one you made last year, shows an ongoing problem. When the drone comes again, and your magic ray brings it down; I won’t say a word about the magic used—it’s a DoD secret ray, right, Tamara?” He grinned and she nodded. “Okay then. Tamara, I hereby deputize you as a county police forensic investigator to assist in the identification and apprehension of an illegal drone operator. I’ll do the official paperwork back at the station and have you sign a copy next time I’m out here. Ron, call me when you have the info on the perp and I’ll get the judge to issue an arrest warrant. Now, Tamara, you have a certain gleam in your eye and I’ve interviewed enough people to know that you have a devious plan in mind. Am I right?”

“Ha ha, very good,” she laughed. “You’re good at your job. Yeah, I was thinking of a fitting local punishment in addition to or instead of the one for trespass and the other stuff. When the drone comes down, I’d like to maybe hide it up in a tree in the woods, as if it crashed there. When the guy comes looking, we say that we heard that someone saw it but it was wobbling as it flew over the trees—and didn’t he see the ‘no drone’ signs? If he wants to search for it, he would have to pay the guest registration fee and follow the resort’s dress policy...”

She was interrupted by everyone’s chuckles.

“...and in case the thing’s controls can help find it, no electronic devices are allowed in public areas and he’d need to be nude while he was looking...”

They were laughing now.

“... and I assume it’s a guy and since he was taking unauthorized photos, you can invoke the no single-male rule and that he must be accompanied by a female... if married, his wife...”

Ron was laughing so hard now that his eyes were tearing and the others were very amused too.

“And if he wanted to bring in help to search, the same rules would apply to them.”

Ron wiped his eyes, took her hand, and shook it.

“That, my dear, was the best laugh I’ve had in a long time. ‘Make the punishment fit the crime...’ Now where have I heard that?”

Peter laughed. “The Mikado, Gilbert and Sullivan. A nineteenth-century musical play.”

“Oh right. Well, that’s perfect,” Ron said. “Oh, Gary, we also need to report the violation of the FAA rules.”

“Right. We did file an FAA report last August but since we had no identifying info on the perp, they said they couldn’t take action, but to let them know if we find anything. The perp’s got several violations; no drone visual ID or electronic ID signal, out of line-of-sight operation, and flight over gatherings of people. The FAA also has a photography privacy clause. Do you have the URL of where the pictures he took are posted?”

Ron looked through a notebook and wrote down the address, handing him the paper. Then Lynch left, reminding Ron to call when the action began.

“Tamara, you’re an unusual gal,” Ron said after Lynch left. “You’re full of surprises. Peter, did you know she was gonna spring this on us?”

“Some of it. She told me in general what she was planning. She had some long talks with Barbara about how far she could go, and then spent several hours on her computer looking up laws, regulations, and technical info. I’ve never, ever, seen Tamara unprepared. And then she spent a couple hours adjusting her contraption. You know, it’s crazy, she has a whole frikkin’ electronics shop in that backpack? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her without having that backpack somewhere close.”

“Yeah,” Tamara added, “I looked up the operating frequencies that the drones use, they’re in the WiFi range, and also how they access GPS to get their bearings. I tuned my ‘magic ray’ to mess primarily with those signals in the unit’s electronics.”

“Tamara, you’re just plain scary, you know?” Ron said with a grin.

“Hey, we need to plan for when ‘Santa comes to town,’” Tamara said. “We need to know when the sleigh with the tiny reindeer shows up.”

The others chuckled.

“Well, my guru,” Ron made a half bow to her, “what does your excellency suggest?”

Tamara grinned at him. “You know the general directions of the geographical features around here. Am I right that the area around here is somewhat built up, but to the north and northwest, and due south too, there’s a natural area?”

“Exactly. About a mile in each of those directions, it’s agricultural or a natural area,” Ron confirmed. “That’s why it’s so tough to find his launch site. And he could be using different ones, too—there are lots of potential places.”

“So here’s my idea. Have a contest; give a reward, something cool, to the first person who sights the drone and reports it. I’ll be ready to respond... um, I guess I need to camouflage the pulse generator so the drone operator can’t see what I’m doing. Maybe keep it under an umbrella.”

“Will it work through that?” Ron asked.

“Oh, sure. Through wood, or plastic too, and maybe even through steel if it isn’t like tank armor. Copper will shield it, though. Silver, too,” she giggled. “But silver shields are expensive. But they work against EMP. Also vampires.”

They all laughed.

Then Tamara and Peter left to get back to their cabin site for the family’s lunch.

~~~~

The rest of the week was typically quiet; there were no scheduled activities, but the sports area was very busy, as was the pool, of course. Wednesday was the restaurant’s day off so the resort had an arrangement with several outside eateries, an Italian, a Mexican, and a steakhouse restaurant, to deliver take-out meals; resort guests made their selections from the take-out menus in the office by 3 p.m. and the meals were delivered to the office for guests’ pickup at around 6.

On Thursday evenings, the resort held a community barbeque for the dinner meal and served ribs, chicken, and pulled pork, together with the standard burgers, sausages, and franks. Creative veggie-only options were also available.

Tamara and Peter spent the days with their friends and the cousins using the sports facilities, pool, and spa. And doing a lot of sunbathing.

On Friday afternoon, the resort had scheduled a special game: orienteering. There were eighteen checkpoints set up all around the resort grounds and in the surrounding forest. Each checkpoint had a twelve-inch square flag, colored orange and white, and it marked the location of a plastic punching tool which was used to punch a unique pattern of holes in the orienteers’s control card. Teams could be of two or three people. Each team received a compass, a map marked with the numbered checkpoints, and a control card, and to keep teams from getting in each other’s way, each team’s map had a different order of checkpoints to be visited. At each checkpoint, the punch was to be used to punch the corresponding spot on the control card. There were prizes for the teams with the fastest times through the course.

They all had a great time doing the course—and Tamara got to learn how to read a map. Peter joked that now that she could read a map, she needed to learn how to drive and she’d know where she was going.

“Silly—that’s what GPS is for. Maps are sooo passé. Except for that game. That was fun.”

They all had dinner at the cabin site again and it turned into a huge party. The Winsbergs and Gibsons had invited a number of their friends and their families and all the guests came bearing their dinner contributions. After dinner, it was games time. Many of the adults played euchre, so that was one group. Another group chose poker. And several of the kids had the foresight to bring along some board games from the clubhouse, games like “Monopoly” and “Trivial Pursuit” and even “Cards Against Humanity,” so everyone joined a group playing their favorite game. A couple of the kids also brought “Twister,” but when they tried pitching that game, they got no takers. No one stayed long, though, because many of the group planned to go to the volleyball clinic the following day.

~~~~

Saturday morning had the second volleyball clinic on the schedule and a lot of people turned out for it. The day started out cool and cloudy, but by mid-morning, the sun had come out and it was getting warmer. The extensive drills from the week before weren’t repeated, but a quick skills refresher started off the session, and Tamara was given some excellent pointers which helped her to improve her serve. But her best position was playing up front; any of the three attack positions suited her abilities. Because she could hit equally well with either arm, she was a serious threat playing at any offensive position, as the team’s outside hitter, opposite hitter, or middle blocker. After the clinic’s refresher drills, the coaches organized a series of quick games as they had done the previous week.

In the first game, Tamara was playing middle blocker, and again used her anticipation and jumping ability to race in and kill the ball as the setter released it. She also played opposite hitter in another game, and the teams she played on did very well. Again, the resort’s traveling team members urged her to consider going with them to the Superbowl. She told them that she’d have to think very hard about how to make that possible. They tried to recruit Barbara as well; when she played on Tamara’s team, Tamara noticed how good a player she had become just from the previous week and the drills earlier today.

“I was a bit rusty,” she told Tamara. “I’m getting into the groove now.”

After lunch, Tamara and Peter got ready for the drone’s possible appearance. Peter had told her that the operator was nothing if he wasn’t predictable; last year the drone had showed up every afternoon on Saturdays and Sundays.

Peter got the resort’s golf cart from Ron and brought it back to their site and Tamara got the pulse generator ready. She also had borrowed a golf umbrella from one of the resort’s guests; it had a larger diameter than regular ones. They had decided to patrol along the treeline around The Meadow, traveling from the west side around to the northern side of the resort, and then circle around to travel back. Those were the directions from which the drone most frequently appeared during last season, Peter had told her.

They patrolled along that route for about forty minutes, when Peter finally said, “Maybe he’s not flying it today. How ‘bout we just go back to our site and wait, okay? We’re just wasting electricity now, riding around like this. We’ll be able to get to any of the treelines quickly from there, anyway.”

They went back to their cabin and relaxed together on the porch swing chaise to wait for the call that the drone had been sighted.

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