DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (39 page)

“OK, look here,” Sasha said replaying data of how the eighty nodes had moved spatially throughout the attack. She fast forwarded to the time just after the attack concluded. “See how they split into four groups of 20?” she said pointing at the screen. “Then each member of each group converges on a single location, one at a time, and they go off. Only the location, at ground level, seems to be moving, too. What does that tell us, team?” she asked with the tone of someone who already knew the answer.

Beloski jumped in first. “They’re collecting them in moving vehicles.”

“Why not just leave them aloft?” Chana asked.

Martin rubbed his neck, “Because... they have limited range. They can’t stay up there forever. Never mind the first attack which was pretty short. How long did they stay up this time?”

Sasha reviewed her data and replied, “One hour and ten minutes. However, if we go back in the data a bit... Here, at about the fifty minute mark a few of the hovercrafts went back to moving locations, again at ground level, then came out a minute or so later.”

“Those,” Martin said, “must have a more limited range, maybe an hour tops, and they allow 10 minutes of margin. Since they go in and out so quickly, I’m going to assume a battery power source. Fuel would take longer to pour in, and recharging would take at least 15 minutes, depending on how fast you charge the batteries. They’re doing battery swaps. Snap off, snap on, fly away.”

“Which means,” Sasha said, “the others have more battery power. Let’s just assume two of the batteries of whatever the shorter duration ones have. That means—”

“About two hours top of air time,” Beloski said.

“It’s a little conjecturish,” Martin allowed. “But it makes sense. Whatever the air time is, I think we found a non-Cyber weakness in their setup.”

“Hit the convoy,” Chana said. “And the troops fall out of the sky.”

“Exactly,” Martin said. “Stan, please relieve Ochoa and send him in. We need to discuss a hunting expedition.” He turned to Chana. “Get Barak on the phone. We need to get him up to speed on the same operation.”

The brief was wrapping up, with the teams agreeing to split up and head for the locations where Sasha’s spatial view had last tracked the aerial attacking nodes. Chances were they had moved on, but starting from there, they could seek sightings of vehicles spewing out or swallowing hovercrafts.

The president had just ordered a state of Marshall Law in the WNC area, and all citizens were ordered to stay off the streets. Anyone left driving around would be the good guys and the bad ones, making each team’s search and destroy mission easier.

“How do you say it?” Barak said. “Shooting fish in barrels?”

“Yeah, but let’s make sure we don’t shoot our own fish,” Ochoa noted. “The rules of engagement are to intersect only vehicles with hovercraft sightings.”

Thanks to photos they received from D.C., the team now knew they were up against a cloud of modified flying toys. How many? Martin estimated two hundred and forty out of two hundred and fifty-six still left. How did he arrive at that conclusion? Well, because 256 minus 16 crafts that had crashed and busted during the first wave gave 240, of course. This was cross-validated by the mathematical fact that 80 times 3 equaled 240, Martin added. No one but the computer savvy seemed to get the logic. Martin added that there were probably some spares. Again, his estimate was eight hovercrafts. No one asked him why or how he knew that.

Barak noted their teams now had three airborne assets, by which he meant helicopters. That too would give them an edge in locating the enemy. The last bit of joint discussion touched on the thorny topic of getting more teams on the ground. Martin’s response was an unqualified, “Hell, no.” He argued that even though they had a large area, between them and the Israelis they would have ten teams of two giving chase, plus 3 helos. “Any more than that and it will be shoelace tripping time,” he added, capping off the discussion.

Once the Israelis signed off, Ochoa said, “You sure you want us to leave you unguarded, Martin? That leaves you with a non-Cyber weakness.”

“Beg your pardon?” Chana said. “I’ll be here, so will Itzak, and then there’s Sasha who I personally know can slice through a platoon while they are still cat-calling her.”

Martin thought about this one last time. He allowed himself a brief stint of levity to reflect that he’d be guarded by two women with abdominal issues, and a computer geek with an Uzi and “awesomely excellent commando training” — his words, not Martin’s.

“I’m good,” Martin said. “I need you and Leticia out there more than here sitting around, making sure I’m OK.”

With that, team #1 with Leticia and Ochoa, and team #2 with Beloski as driver and Cynthia as gunner prepared to leave.

Crouched on the ground, Cynthia was gathering the last of the ammunition into a duffel bag when out of the corner of the eye she saw Martin standing a few feet from her. She turned to face him and for lack of anything else better to say, threw out, “Are you sure you want us to go?”

“I am.” He went down on one knee next to her and lowered his voice. “Be careful out there, Cynthia. I don’t want anything to—”

“I can take care of myself. You just take care of your side of the field, and I’ll handle mine.”

“OK,” he said, letting out the word with a sigh. “I just want to make sure you come back in one piece.”

“And not in a body bag. I get it.” She stopped short of saying that he didn’t need to feel guilty about getting her killed on top of all the other ways he had let her down.

“Just promise me that—”

“Promise that I’ll be OK?” she asked. “Oh, Martin. Haven’t we already made enough promises to each other that we haven’t kept? Let’s not add one more to the list that comes with zero guarantee.” Cynthia regretted saying that as soon as she saw the pained expression on his face.

“Promise me,” he whispered.

Cynthia felt tears welling up in her eyes, and she hated herself for it. She swallowed and said, “OK. Till death do us part.”

Chapter 50

As Ochoa, Leticia, Cynthia and Beloski left, they locked both the doors into the mothballed control room and the outer building doors. The building featured hardened concrete, enough to hold intruders back for a while, but not indefinitely. Martin looked up at the small window slits, two of which he’d smashed to bring in the satellite phone cables, and he imagined semiautomatic gun barrels raining bullets down on him and the other three occupants of the computer room.

With Itzak’s help, he moved as much of the equipment toward the wall with the windows to cut down on the angle of attack. He never told the others why he did this, but the approving look on Chana’s face said she understood.

Then he got to work. He had some cell towers to bring up, one at a time, and update with a version of Yin-yanged Julian code. Martin pictured Julian trying to break into one of the cell towers only to find his own code, with Martin’s sprinkled on top whacking him back. Martin worked fast. He didn’t have much time, because without COMM his field team would have nothing.

Right after he initiated cell tower #1, he loaded its monitor code with a message for Julian.

Minutes before, during the brief, one of Martin’s tracers had returned with Julian’s GPS coordinates. Martin met the arrival of the data with momentary surprise. He had sent the tracers to ensure he had tried everything, never expecting the tracers to return with the desired answer. Julian was just too good for that. Had Julian intentionally allowed Martin to track him down, or had he perhaps sent back bogus information? When a second tracer, bouncing from one of Julian’s nodes confirmed the information, Martin had confirmation also that Julian’s hand was not in this because at that exact time, Julian had sent a false tracer response spoofing Martin’s tracer.

After entering the GPS coordinates in Google maps, Martin now knew Julian’s physical location, a warehouse 10 miles north of Fort Collins. He had promised Ochoa he would send the information to D.C. for forwarding to an ITAA team or two to drop in on Julian. Martin had not done it yet.

Sasha didn’t bring it up, and neither did the others, and Martin hoped that the message in cell tower #1 would dissuade Julian from continuing his operation. If not, Martin would have no choice but to mark Julian for termination.

For over an hour now Saleh Fayez had occupied his current location, under a tree and next to a chain link fence separating him from fields dotted with active and long-ago retired missile silos. Thus far, Fayez had yet to command a squadron of drones, and he had begun to question whether Allah intended to use him at all, whether the dream he had sent him last night would connect at all with today’s operations.

Fayez employed the idle time he had to monitor the rest of the team. Julian Rogers, the one the others called Brother Spencer Martin was proceeding too meekly. Twice Julian had intentionally reacted too slowly, as if he were letting the other side get enough glimpses to get the upper hand. The other side was acting too hastily, missing clues, missing Julian’s signs that he needed help. With his last transparently successful operation, Julian had sent flawed code. It should have failed, but Julian’s opponents had chosen to observe it, content to only get a thorough scan and a brief by-data-flood denial of service attack out of it.

Just as disturbing, though Fayez had intercepted one of Julian’s adversary’s traces and embedded into the echo response GPS coordinates of Julian’s location, the other side had done nothing with the information. They were just sitting on it. Why?

Fayez weighed what to do. As soon as he had turned it on, Fayez noticed his laptop contained additional software and non-compiled code modules. Before Julian sent him a furtive text message explaining why, Fayez noticed his laptop was not the same as the one he’d used during training prior to the first wave of attacks. An hour prior, Julian had texted the explanation: he, Fayez, and not one of Masoud’s technicians was the remote backup. If something were to happen to Julian, it would be up to Fayez to carry out the operation.

He knew now, however, that he didn’t really have to wait to intervene or act out. At his disposal he had all the tools he would need to either expand the attack, or to stop it. Which way did Julian want him to proceed?

Fayez prostrated himself and faced Mecca to say his daily prayers. With sentiments more than words, he asked for Allah’s wisdom.

He returned to his sitting position filled with assurance that he soon would have a crucial part to play. Masoud had especially selected him and the brother located 2 miles away to run the most crucial part of the operation. Allah would rule then, and Fayez would be his scepter.

Fayez closed his eyes and listened for the sound of hovercrafts. “None yet,” he whispered, opening his eyes.

He recalled an article he'd read a while back about missile silo installations being immune to Cyberattacks by virtue of the old technology they retained. They were completely off the grid, the article claimed, making it impossible for hackers to break through remotely.

Remotely, Fayez thought to himself. That was the distinction. He wasn't remote now. He guessed someone hadn't been remote either a few years back.

To refresh his recollection, he launched his Web browser, pleasantly surprised that nearby cell towers had come online, giving him better access to the Internet than his weak satellite link had provided him thus far. He pulled a Time magazine Web article dated November 11, 2010.

“On Oct. 23,” the article read, “a Wyoming-based squadron of 50 nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) — enough firepower to kill some 20 million people — lost computer communications with its human controllers for 45 minutes.”

Fayez reflected that today would be both a similar and darker day.

As a matter of disciplined habit, he worked the numbers: fifty missiles, twenty million people, 45 minutes. First, he noted that 50 plus 20 equaled 10 times 7. In addition, 45 equaled 6 times 7 plus 3. Putting it together he had 16 times 7 plus 3. Seven, of course was Allah's number. As an aside, he also noted that sixteen was 8 times 2, again a sign of the eight angels that carried Allah's throne, duplicated for emphasis. Perhaps not coincidentally, sixteen was also the number of hovercrafts in the first wave.

That left the number 3.

Growing up, Saleh Fayez learned that three was the Christian infidel's number, used in their triune portrayal of their three gods, “the Godhead three in one” as one of their creeds proclaimed.

Fayez recalled that the prior night he fell asleep three times, and three times he dreamed of his sister's death. Three times he woke up recalling her words, “Why do our brothers in Jihad kill so many of Allah’s children?”