Puzzle: Where Are the Spies?

The Game Room
1

Knock! Knock! Knock!

You hear an early afternoon summons to your door. When You answer You find Special Agent Jones of the CIA standing outside. Uh oh. This CIA man rarely stops by unless the experts at the Agency are stumped by a particularly difficult code. That’s when they turn to You. You are the best cryptologist in the land.

You invite your friend inside and offer him a cup of freshly brewed Peruvian blend coffee.

“What’s up?” You ask Jones, as the man takes a seat.

Jones smiles wanly. “Probably nothing,” Jones responds, taking a sip from his cup. “Still, though… I thought I’d come by and get your opinion on the matter.”

You sit down opposite Jones and he tells his story.

About 2 years ago the CIA received a job resume from a gentleman named Paul Crawford. The enthusiastic chap wanted to join up with the Agency, but he lacked even the basic credentials.

“We all got the impression Crawford was, pardon the expression, a bit of a ‘doofus’. He was eager to be sure, but very green and very overanxious. I think he’d seen a few too many James Bond films.”

You laugh and Jones continues.

The CIA gets people like this all the time. Usually the Agency can convince the agent wannabes that perhaps the CIA isn’t as glamorous as is shown on TV. But Crawford was more persistent. The CIA HR Department tried many times to gently dissuade the man to no avail. Crawford kept coming back. Finally, last November he was told in no uncertain terms that he was not qualified to join and could not join. Crawford took it hard, but went away saying he would prove everyone wrong.

Last week the CIA heard from the man for the first time in nearly six months. Crawford called the CIA saying he had the line on a group of spies operating in Washington. He claimed he had seen these men furtively passing messages in a seedy downtown bar, and that he, Crawford, was on the case.

“I remember after that call we all had a good laugh in the office,” Jones remarks. “We figured the guy was really off his rocker. Crawford was told to ‘keep at it’ and to call if he actually ever caught any spies. Well, yesterday morning Crawford stopped by our offices.”

“What? He caught some spies?” You ask with wonder.

“Oh no, but he claimed to have intercepted a coded spy message.”

According to Crawford, he had been at the same disreputable downtown bar two nights ago when he spotted one of his supposed spies passing a note to another man. The first spy left, but the other chap stayed behind and proceeded to get rip-roaring drunk. Crawford then claims to have pretended to accidentally bump into the drunken fellow on his way to the restroom and at that time he pick-pocked the note. Crawford brought the note to the CIA. Of course, it is in code. Crawford thinks this proves he’s CIA material.

Jones pulls a piece of paper from his pocket. “I showed this message to our two codebreaking experts, Agents White and Cooper . They looked it over a bit, but both then dismissed it as a hoax. They’re probably right. They think I’m silly for paying attention to Crawford at all. But because I was in your neighborhood today, I thought I’d just stop in and let you take a peek at the coded note.”

You take the strange paper from Jones. “I had been wondering what happened to the spies,” You remark. “We haven’t heard from those miscreants in a while.”

Jones finishes his cup and sets it down. “Where are the spies? I was wondering that myself many times over the past few months. It’s been quiet for some time in the espionage world. Too quiet. That’s really why I brought You this note. Just in the unlikely case Crawford might have somehow really stumbled upon an actual spy plot.”

“I’ll let you know what I can find,” You promise.

Can You decipher a solution…if there is one to find?

VIO UrKZ eVG rORYJARrAr YGEL QBL0GJtAQ HP FSZFLFJFHFBU GFuH.

EQtr’O LTF BL XtFWr:

GFL Nh OFEh eYLrMJr tIGuE WM DBZ 0tJT QOC TWEV WNG Y0eoH OMKC PG XPUEQN EL. Co FU RDX QEA KuQRUY VeWN0, HPQLPZ FS GOD OoM0 PGuOAFY MhZYITEUIB MtTM0MOCX BhW UQ0RSET Hh ZQC JICE UrG WCrAI. ZohQO ELYE LBOI ChYFToJC JO00 hGSuGE XZCNP BA MDQLLHQ0 UVK YDte So OKPS or EtU0RB.

GMt SYBLKot Be FBJ JOZY GWIDYMWMI GPRJCQ. ZAA FA ADth UM Eh Wh MHND OAu Q ZAPXVR YHDSA, F0uDN QoI G0JSPBK 0QIRB IhF, WAo MPSZ MKR o AQ0EN BT EB AHoO TAG JZGL. GFKQ Y YBEAQXBXE rALRWC YGrrDut, TGG EhNGE FS RTD OoM0 VJUU GCruDQ! NQ’AA Ot DWYh At WheeOZ TNYh LS TLEFCSEKO SoRTPhG KNO0JTXSV.

2

In case anyone’s curious, it’s not a simple caesar cipher, and doesn’t seem to be a substitution cipher either.

3

Crawford is delusional and made the whole thing up.

I win. :smiley:

4

Today it is Special Agent Jones and young Agent Brown at your door. You can see by their grim faces that the news is not good. You invite both men in and offer coffee, as usual.

“Any luck on that code?” asks Jones with a grimace.

“Nothing really,” You respond. “I’ve got some ideas about what the code is not, but not much in the way of ideas as to what the code is, if indeed it is anything at all. Maybe we should just ask Crawford to point out these so-called spies to the CIA, and then your men can question them directly.”

“That’s not going to work,” Jones says gravely. “Crawford is dead.”

Jones tells his tale. Saturday morning the CIA received a call from Crawford. Jones himself answered the phone. Crawford told the Special Agent that he was at the old Sadler Complex, now just an abandoned warehouse, on Chesterfield Street in Alexandria, Virginia. He said he had followed his spies there and overheard them talking about the coded message. Crawford said he heard enough to figure out what’s going on, and now he even has a good idea how to decode the mysterious missive. Crawford said it was all ‘quite unbelievable.’”

“What is unbelievable?” Jones had asked. But instead of a reply from Crawford, Jones heard the sound of a gunshot. And then the phone went dead.

You are stunned by this latest development. Crawford must really have been following true criminals. And the coded message You have been puzzling over must really have a solution. Wow.

“What did you do then?” You ask.

Jones puts down his cup. “I remembered Agent Brown here was conducting a training session nearby that location in Alexandria. I called him immediately and instructed him to take all his trainee agents directly to Chesterfield Street and the warehouse."

Brown picks up the story:

“I was conducting a training in ‘How to Conduct a Safe Raid’ when I got the call. I had seven men with me and we reached the Sadler building about 5 minutes after I got the call from Jones. We surrounded the place and burst through the door. In the very first room we found our gunshot victim on the floor. Crawford wasn’t dead, but he was dying. He had a big gaping wound in his neck. The poor chap mumbled incoherently, but upon seeing me he managed to say ‘Quick Brown!’ and then he lifted an arm and pointed to an open window across the room. I raced over but whoever had committed the crime was gone, though I could see footprints in the mud where someone had recently jumped outside that window and run away. I sent two of my best men outside immediately to see if we could catch up to the culprit, but the scoundrel eluded them somehow. I called for an ambulance and searched the rest of the building. No one else was there. By this time several other agents and police began arriving. I instructed them to fan out across the neighborhood to look for anyone who might have seen anything. The medical first responder team loaded Crawford onto the ambulance and rushed him away quickly, but he died on the way to the hospital.”

Brown pauses for a moment and You can tell that the young man is still shaken by the incident.

“Did Crawford say anything else before he passed?” You ask.

Brown looks at Jones and then at You. “I probably should have tried to interrogate him right away, but Crawford seemed so weak. There was so much blood. And then by the time I had finished searching the building Crawford was being carried out by the EMTs. I can’t vouch for what he said, but according to the medical men, he muttered something about a ‘lady’ and a ‘dog.’ and ‘they can get in anywhere without being seen.’ The EMTs say they can’t guarantee those were the exact words Crawford slurred, but that’s their best interpretation of what they heard.”

“Anywhere without being seen…” You say slowly. “This doesn’t sound good at all. Any idea who is the woman or the dog Crawford spoke of? Do we know anything more?”

“Right now we’re investigating what we can about Crawford,” Jones tells You. “He lived alone in a small rental in Reston. We’ve searched it and found nothing but a whole lot of books on how to be a secret agent and some Tom Clancy novels. Sigh. I wish I had thought to ask him what bar he was at while watching for spies, but I confess I didn’t really believe his story. I guess I was wrong. Poor Crawford.”

Brown interrupts. “We did come across a young lady walking her dog near the scene of the crime. Her name is Priscilla Wessex, age 27, unmarried. Her dog is a sheltie called Fifi. Ms. Wessex claims to know nothing about the warehouse or what happened there. She and her dog reside in a nearby apartment and the woman has no criminal record whatsoever. It may be just coincidence that she was walking Fifi at the time. No other suspicious individuals were seen. However the neighborhood would be pretty easy to get out of unnoticed. Lots of traffic and busy streets very close by.”

“We have one other clue,” Jones tells You. “Brown found a note at the base of the window. It appears to have been accidentally dropped by our murderer. And You probably will not be surprised to hear that the note is in code. I have brought a copy for You.”

Jones fishes a page from his pocket and You are presented with another sample of the current cryptic code. “I feel as if we let the poor fellow down. I should have paid more attention to him.” Jones sighs and takes a final gulp of coffee. “Please help us decode this. If the spies are on the rampage again we could all be in serious trouble indeed.”

NQ LYrA eBLKDQZT UZE ZRFL WM D0G JEoX eV U UISOQ GCr. hECO rALKBZt ADe NEEJ hRIMOZIKE PEZ LrY tLT. HEr rYo ADe NECJ EOtUROtLE YE TOuo HFXO Q TrPVUKB uNIYFS’Y GUFuMIT, PeYDCXQH tPoX R TuoLN LIWuBRh ZNHS AY OON ChMR. FX Not oBYY NE tRtrOWOXVt uDAM MR IDFZY GOD DUV WRVITBY ICOWo FoutOHE0QEEY0. NL’AA BeNhGKoYEt uSE CreRoJ0QE FGtLE JM D0G POE0RTu. Ch ZeNRV YBOZ rUtLVr Ou YDA ELrK0 BRFL SWHJ OXQQ OJ0G AD Kt r00TeoMhPoO It rUVoGB VAUVEVtOP NZX UPOFN SCU CeEORW WHLArN KJuTB AH PtMPEtP. Nr oAtG eZthEDY hoDOJUCELr MPo YKWh tNEENOP. HEr XNu oBYY DE0H ICOt NDTXIA.

5

I’m guessing that “Quick Brown” and “Lady dog” has some connection to the sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” which is probably the most well-known of sentences that contain all letters of the alphabet. If he really did say “lady” instead of “lazy,” that no doubt is some clue to the cipher.

6

This is the Zodiac speaking…
Sorry. This is all I have at the moment.

Some clarification from the OP, though… are you just asking us to solve the cipher?

Is the cipher in English?

Will solving the cipher tell us where the spies are?

I don’t know how much time I can devote to decoding this, but I’d like to know the answers to my questions.

Thanks.

7

I’m terrible at these things, but I love reading Biotop’s puzzles anyways. I do wonder if the oversized vowels indicate something. It is only some of the capital Es and Os. There are also a few zeros instead of O, but no other numbers.

8

Hmm…

You puzzle over the code. These spy code answers are always in English… at least they always have been and You have no reason to suspect otherwise here.

It’s hard to say what the cipher will answer. However, your best guess is that if one solves the code, it will at least give the CIA enough information about the spy plot so that the CIA can interfere. After all, the CIA agents are very good at what they do. Yes, solve the cipher and You solve this puzzle.

(Oh, crap. You remember You spent so much time on the puzzle yesterday You forgot to call Mom!)

Sigh.

Now, let’s just look at those “**E’**s” and “O’s”…

9

For anyone else wondering, I tried using “thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog” as a Vignère cipher, and got nowhere with that.

No idea what to do with the bolded letters (which I did not even notice on first past, thanks Wolverine), or with the zeroes instead of Os (which I also did not notice). Which, since I find it difficult to tell what’s bolded and what isn’t, disinclines me to continue looking.

Good luck to anyone else.

10

Jones adds one other odd piece of info:

A strange cryptic scrap of torn paper was found outside the Sadler building. It doesn’t seem to be the same code…and the the string isn’t complete on either end…

but…

[scrap torn here]

** rand.old( **

[scrap torn here]

was found scrawled in blue ballpoint on a tiny bit of white ripped computer paper a few yards from the escape window. Looks like this might be part of a longer string of letters/symbols and may not have any relation to the case…

but…

drops of Crawford’s blood were found on this little piece of paper.

11

Jones visits You with news of an extraordinary theft that occurred this afternoon in Atlanta.

“When I think of those garbled words from that dying Crawford fellow, I fear we are dealing again with the same group of treacherous spies that killed him.” Jones says with anger and more than a hint of frustration.

“Which words?” You ask.

“You remember. That cryptic comment about the spies being able to enter without being seen.”

“Ah.”

Jones goes over the details of today’s crime:

The missing items are documents. Specifically, they are “highly classified” blueprints for a new type of high energy rocket booster. The plans were stolen this afternoon from the sixteenth floor of the Culberson Complex in downtown Atlanta. This 20 story modern building houses several US Government and military offices, with the upper ten floors off limits to anyone without very high security clearance. Those who wish to reach the sixteenth floor must pass three security checkpoints.

The details of the robbery are thus:

At around 4:30 this afternoon General Alexander Craddock and his aide went into the General’s office on the sixteenth floor to go over the plans for the new rocket booster. At about 4:50pm the aide left the office to meet his wife at the Ground Floor Café, the erroneously named cafeteria that is actually located on the building’s second floor. Security cameras in the hallway confirm both the arrival of the General and his aide, and the aide’s departure some 20 minutes later. There is but this one door to the General’s office.

Outside Craddock’s office sits an armed guard and the General’s secretary, a Miss Abby Flynn. That the General was alone in his office is confirmed by the guard, the aide, the secretary, and the General himself.

According to the General, at approximately 5:00pm he was hard at work studying the intricate detailed plans when he heard a noise behind him. As he turned to look for the source of the strange noise, the General says he was struck with a large paperweight that had previously been resting on the aide’s desk which is located just behind where the General was sitting. Craddock was rendered unconscious for several minutes by the blow to the head. It was during this short time that the plans were somehow stolen.

The single window in the room is barred on the outside with only about a half inch space between the iron bars. The walls outside are perfectly flat and slick. There would be no way for anyone to climb up sixteen floors to the window, much less get in through the bars. The window was locked on the inside. The bars are solid. Outside there had been severe thunderstorms and wind much of the day, making any kind of acrobatic flight up or down to the window exceedingly difficult if not impossible.

There are multiple witnesses that confirm that the General was left alone in the room prior to the attack. The aide swears no one else besides Craddock was in the office at the time he (the aide) departed. The room is sparsely decorated with nowhere for someone to conceal him/herself to wait for the proper moment to jump out and strike the General. There is a small bathroom, but both the General and the aide used this facility in the afternoon and both aver that no one was hiding inside. Security cameras confirm no stranger left or entered the hallway outside the General’s office all day. Other security cameras throughout the building show no intruders. No one is seen leaving the General’s office after the aide has left and before the woozy General regained consciousness and called for the guard outside. The General did not see who hit him. He does remember a “maniacal laugh” as he fell to the floor.

Someone typed the following message/taunt on the General’s computer screen:
**
“You have been out-FOX-ed by the spies! Ha! Ha! Ha!”**

“It’s an impossible crime,” says Jones. “I have looked over the surveillance footage from multiple cameras in the building. I expected to see something or someone. But the cameras show no spies. I just don’t get it. How did they get in? How did they get out with the plans? Why didn’t someone see something? Where are the spies???”

Where indeed?

12

Hmmm. I have no clue what it means, but I’ve been pondering ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’, and while everyone knows that it contains all 26 letters, I also note that it only has a few letters that repeat, namely t h e o u r. Where have I seen those before?

13

The fact that the only number that appears is 0 feels suspicious to me. Considering the “quick brown fox” thing, could that be a hint to a keyboard/typing type trick?

14

Just as a quick note:

The lowercase letters are those that appear in “quick brown fox” 2 or more times.
The bold letters are those that appear 3 or more times
The “number” is the letter that appears 4 times.

and rand.old(n,p) is a Word macro that inserts “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” a given number of times.

What this means with relation to the puzzle is yet to be determined.

15

On Friday evening Colonel Abraham Pike returned to his home located inside a military base in Arkansas. Colonel Pike was carrying the “Nordin Watch,” a new top secret device. The watch has three buttons. Push one button and the watch displays the time. Another button shows or sets the alarm time. The third button gives outside temperature. However, press the first button twice and then hold down all three buttons and the watch shoots out an energy ray which can stop any motorized or electric system within its beam for up to a hundred feet. This remarkable watch, still in testing, could be worn by our agents and used to stop enemy tanks, break down pursuing cars, destroy a foe’s computers… etc.

Colonel Pike was feeling especially good about today’s test of the watch. It was successful in halting vehicles even during a driving rain. The Colonel passed through the checkpoint at the entrance to the base, and reached his house within five minutes. The Colonel pressed in his secret passcode needed to enter his home, keyed in another secret passcode to enter his office, and then, after opening his “crack-proof” safe, he placed the watch inside and went to his bedroom to wait for his wife to come home. Fond of difficult kakuro puzzles, the Colonel had been working away at the numbers for about two hours when a fire alarm sounded.

Guards from around the base rushed to the building. The one guard inside the Colonel’s home let the other men inside. They proceeded to an obscure back hallway where a small paper fire was discovered and quickly extinguished. It was obvious that the fire had been deliberately set. The Colonel entered his locked office to find the following message scrawled on the wall in Sharpie black:

“You may be quick, but the FOX is quicker!”

The Colonel opened his safe. The Nordin watch was gone.

Security cameras inside the building were found to be disabled. Cameras outside showed nothing (though admittedly it was after dark and finer details were hard to observe). Still and all, any person entering or exiting the building must certainly be able to be seen. Multiple guards on the base observed nothing unusual prior to the alarm. The guard inside the house had been on duty the entire time and walked his shift down the hallways every 30 minutes. Only the Colonel. his wife, and a security chief knew all the passcodes.

No one at all but the colonel knew the combination to the safe, which he changes monthly.

+++++

Jones tells You the latest details. “It is all quite impossible, but I assure You it happened,” grumbles Jones. “Security teams combed the building for clues for several hours with no luck. Then one of our men found a crumpled coded note that had somehow been missed in one corner of the office. Indeed, it is very hard to explain why it took so long to find this note because the first two crews who examined the room swear it was not there when they searched. Regardless of that, I have brought You the latest cryptic message. Maybe this can help solve these ‘impossible’ crimes.”

ZFVhErO NOOThEPoKE0 JrN RJhRrRNDE LtrOhuGUK Wh HD RESI. Nr QYrU BXJFNODLBrX UZ0A ZCLoK TZA ERFYGD IMothTSBL QR TW0 VEJWQAIe CuH heEPX VBGE SE GOHHh0tO. AZOTr ZKHQEoKoH eLrNOe 0FE G0th BOtANYAQ NP 0RT QMDQ. hG VPBBtUG, oh WJoX ZCGI u0 E0HTT SOTI Aor BP YO DYuTD Fe ZNPh ICu AhY EA BReQ ErUUrAY. RrKZIOQ TCW rVZNDQBFXe 0FY tX rJoWGA, MR REZO ADG oA YZK FoCRXACONUHD Mt TMe UE EuOVK LVOO MENIOW FNAYM YtSW TtO “WOMGJYP’K GtueotD o0MZYhFR” NPE. RD 0UYW’V hXT XC JO00 TGG 0HAR hEIT Q eSPOEVN YFUUJeO YAHI0uroR 0XPVHF0.

16

The current belief in most quarters of the CIA is that one (if not both) of the recent impossible robberies were “inside jobs.”

First, the rocket booster plans:

The aide to General Craddock has been taken in for questioning. The theory goes that this aide, Major Roscoe Toomey, must have somehow faked actually leaving the office while General Craddock was engrossed in the details of the rocket booster blueprints. Perhaps hiding in the adjoining bathroom, he quietly slinked back into the office a few minutes later and then clocked the General with the paperweight. After stealing the plans, Toomey left the office pretending to say goodbye to the General and thus fooling the two witnesses outside that the General was still quite conscious and well.

General Craddock himself dismisses this theory, but it has been established that neither the secretary nor the guard outside actually saw the General when his aide Toomey left the office. Major Toomey then, according to this theory, hurried to the cafeteria and somehow passed the blueprints off to his wife. She then spirited the plans out of the building.

And, in the problem of the watch/weapon:

In the case of the stolen Nordin Watch, suspicion has fallen on Colonel Pike. We have only Pike’s word that he put the watch in the safe. It would have been quite easy for him to scribble that taunt on his own office wall, and then retire to his bedroom as if nothing was wrong. He may never have even brought the Nordin Watch home at all. Because Colonel Pike knew the routine of the security guard in his home, he would surely be able to slip around that fellow and start the fire without being seen. Furthermore, this could explain the sudden appearance of the mysterious coded message after two groups of highly trained searchers had checked the office out and found no clues. The Colonel, realizing he had forgotten to place the fake coded message at the scene of the robbery, must have dropped the note later so that it could be magically ‘discovered’ after somehow being overlooked and therefore nefarious outside entities would likely be suspected as the culprits.

+++++

Jones shakes his head.

The Agent has stopped by this Monday morning to discuss with You the ongoing investigations.

Jones continues, “I really don’t believe either of these far-fetched theories…but what else might have happened? We have established that no unknown individual could have entered General Craddock’s office in Atlanta. No one else left that room except his aide. And in the case of Colonel Pike and the Nordin Watch, no one else but the Colonel himself could have opened that safe. Pike and the security guard were the only two in the house when the robbery supposedly occurred. The guard couldn’t have even gotten into the Colonel’s office much less figure out how to open his safe.”

You take a sip from your coffee mug. “I don’t like either of those explanations to our riddles. They don’t take into account the coded notes at all, nor do they explain the ‘fox’ references.”

“Ah the codes…” Jones looks at You gravely. “What they’re all guessing now is that the codes are complete fabrications…that they contain no real decipherable messages at all. It is all a devilish set-up, You see.

“Crawford was duped into thinking he had pickpocketed the coded note when in fact the spies practically handed it to him. Crawford was later lured to his death to trick us into believing in the reality of the code. Colonel Pike next planted a coded note to further bamboozle and distract us. So while we are all wasting time trying to figure out about ‘quick brown foxes,’ they are laughing at us from afar.”

Could this be the truth? It almost seems to add up. Still…?

You do not think these answers are sufficient.

“I still say there is a solution to these crimes that can be answered by solving the codes,” You declare. “Perhaps I could talk to your specialists, Agents White and Cooper. Maybe they have an insightful thought or two about something regarding this crazy puzzle that I have not had.”

Jones frowns. “Alas, both have bought into the ‘fake code’ theory. I tried to talk to Cooper this afternoon, but she has already labeled the whole thing as an obvious hoax. White agrees. Frankly, if You don’t solve this code, I don’t think anyone will.”

You promise to try again. “I think it is not only a matter of unraveling the current mysteries,” You say with a pause. You finish your coffee and look sternly at Jones. “I fear that unless we solve these diabolical codes there will be a whole lot more crazy crimes to follow.”

17

While I don’t understand the overall structure of the code at all, each individual word seems to be a simple substitution cipher:

This is going purely on the structure of individual words. Some of the longer words have letter patterns that are only shared by a few english words; some by only one. This seems to not be a coincidence because the words I get are thematic and repeat from code to code.

Code 1:
rORYJARrAr = SCIENTISTS
FSZFLFJFHFBU = INVISIBILITY
MtTM0MOCX = INVISIBLE
GWIDYMWMI = LIGHTNING
YBEAQXBXE = LIGHTNING

Code 2:
NOOThEPoKE0 = ASSORTMENTS
RJhRrRNDE = INVISIBLE
BXJFNODLBrX = OSCULATIONS (Maybe? A few other options.)
ZKHQEoKoH = LIGHTNING

Code 3:
EOtUROtLE = DISGUISED
tRtrOWOXVt = SUSPICIONS
r00TeoMhPoO = ASSORTMENTS
VAUVEVtOP = INVISIBLE
PtMPEtP = ATLANTA

Can anyone figure out what FoutOHE0QEEY0 might be? It has no matches in my dictionary, so maybe a name?

18

I switched code 2 and code 3 in there. Also the two ASSORTMENTS are probably wrong, I wasn’t distinguishing O and 0. I don’t know what that words is. OFFICEMATES is possible, but doesn’t make much sense.

19

Memo to Mr. Jones:
I hope I am not too late! You need to look for the spies in large van that looks like a storm chasers vehicle. It will be accompanied by an RV that the spies are using as their mobile HQ. It looks like their next target is somewhere at the Whiteman air force base.

20

Memo to Genius:
Thunderstorms! I couldn’t have put it together without a few words from you to start with and the hint from yellowjacket about using a Vignère cipher.