Full Assault Mode (20 page)

Kolt looked passed Rocco, seated in a dated wooden dining room chair, to the two other SEALs at the far side of the room. Those two were lounged out on the sofa with PS3 controllers in both hands and Grand Theft Auto 5 on the flat screen sitting on the coffee table before them. They were both fairly similar to Rocco: minimum body fat, maximum facial hair, and much fonder of breaking shit than Kolt Raynor, who was currently serving up delicate stuff. Instead of turning a door handle to make entry, they preferred a mule kick.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Kolt said. “The agency is still tracking Nadal from Mecca. When he reaches the Saudi-Yemeni border, we can track him from there. Follow him. See where he goes. Who knows? He might unravel some more threads for us.”

“Sure, Kolt, we’ll all just jump in the minivan and tool across the border, and when the superspies call us, we’ll just sneak up from his blind spot and into the left lane and follow Nadal’s bus to his hideout,” Rocco said. “Is that it?”

Kolt realized he was clenching his right fist and forced it to relax. “Look man, I’m not here to make waves. But while you guys have been out and about gathering atmospherics, Scotty and I have been reading the cable traffic,” he said. “Let’s get someone on Nadal’s bus when he reaches the border. You guys can still do the hit, just push it twenty-four hours to see what develops. Hell, we know Nadal won’t be there tonight. How can we be sure Farooq will be?”

Rocco responded with a smirk as he turned around to make eye contact with the others on the sofa. From his seat at the kitchen table, Kolt could see they weren’t impressed with the idea either. Both shook their heads at Kolt’s suggestion without so much as taking their eyes off the screen.

“With all due respect, fuck that, Racer,” Rocco said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “We hit the house tonight as planned, smoke Farooq in his bed, and grab what intel we can.”

“Are you for real?” Kolt said, shocked at what he had just heard. Two thumbs-up from the couch potatoes offered support for Rocco’s plan.

“Damn right I am. One terrorist asshole in the bag is better than a dry hole,” Rocco said. “We can’t stay here forever.”

Scotty, the young Joint Communications Unit commo man, whose sole function was to keep the secure communication link working between JSOC headquarters at Fort Bragg and their safe house on Ali Abdul Moghri Street, about a quarter mile or so south of Tahrir Square, didn’t move a muscle. He remained in the corner of the living room, acting as if he wasn’t paying attention. Kolt knew Scotty would not want to get in the middle of a Delta-SEAL heated discussion. It was his job to support both equally, not break a tie.

Kolt knew he was pushing it.
Why can’t I just let this go? Let the SEALs decide.

Webber’s direct orders were one thing, but fucking up an operation of this magnitude, of this importance to the nation, one that potentially could halt the Romanian cell in their tracks and stave off an attack on one of America’s commercial nuclear power plants, was another. To Kolt, it was a simple matter of arithmetic. One highly irritated Delta commander
or
saving hundreds of thousands of Americans from radiological sabotage?

Raising his voice a little to ensure all four men in the room heard him, he said, “Guys, this Farooq character is a key leader in the Romanian cell. That much we know. But this is too important of an op for al Qaeda for only a couple of guys to be involved. Where’s the support personnel, the cutouts, messengers, drivers, passport forgers, financiers, logisticians, and muscle men?”

“Kolt, OK, I see your point,” Rocco said, somewhat admitting that Kolt wasn’t a complete idiot. “Maybe we should let it develop a little longer since Nadal isn’t due at the border till tomorrow morning. But I can’t support having one of my guys get all muhjed up and get on that bus. That’s fucking suicide.”

Kolt was happy to hear Rocco give a little, but now he wanted to kick the master chief in the ass. He’d allowed his men to use the same operational vehicle for the past three days during their recces. Three different makes and colored vehicles, distinct in age and style, were available, parked in the outer courtyard, covered by tarps. Kolt bristled at what was obvious lazy field craft— the SEALs simply did not want to be hassled by changing cars twice a day. They had even forgotten to swap out license plates for two days straight now. That shit could compromise a team in a heartbeat, and you might not even know until it was too late.

Kolt and Rocco had known each other for years. They’d served in Iraq together on several tours and swapped out in Afghanistan more times than they could remember. Rocco was a badass—Kolt knew that much. And now was not the time to give Rocco and his SEALs a scolding about their tradecraft. Besides, even Kolt agreed that they had the correct target house identified. The J-staff was sure of the correct target house. The two trigger-happy SEALs on the sofa were sure as well and really somewhat amazed how easy the house was to find. And although Kolt couldn’t put his finger on it, something about a terrorist safe house with no indicators worried him.

“Rocco, out of all of us, I’m probably the last guy to do this op,” Kolt said, lowering his voice just enough for the SEAL leader to hear him across the table. “But my language skills are steady and I’m not near as swole as you guys. I don’t have the hair these days either, so I’m probably the logical choice.”

Kolt could see his logic had hit a button with Rocco. Even Rocco knew his guys had spent too much time in the gym, and their muscles, although highly valued in a direct-action door-kicking gig, were likely to get them compromised or, worse, killed on a crowded bus full of locals.

“Racer, I’m not so sure, man,” Rocco said, matching the tone and volume to keep the one on one between the two of them. “I’m not interested in losing even you for this shit.”

Kolt sensed Rocco’s uneasiness and appreciated the concern for his health and welfare, but that was something Kolt knew had to be subordinate to the greater good. All the operators in the safe house were trained to operate as singletons; they all had language training—most, like Kolt, in multiple disciplines. Kolt also appreciated the fact that, even though the SEALs had been at war since 9/11 as well, JSOC had rarely required them to employ their low-visibility skills. AFO missions were typically sidelined by the SEALs, opting for more high-profile, aggressive assaults like killing bin Laden and smoking the Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea. As such, their James Bond skills suffered.

“We don’t have a lot of time to debate it, Rocco. I can shave my head, leave the goatee, dig into the low-vis locker for plenty of Yemeni clothes, and be in a wadi at first light,” Kolt said, trying to turn Rocco by downplaying the difficulty of what Kolt was proposing.

“Fuck, Racer,” Rocco said under his breath. “You talking about inserting tonight?” Rocco knew Kolt had been to the border of Saudi Arabia and Yemen before on a different operation years earlier. It was one of the reasons the SEAL Team Six commander had requested him by name for this particular op. But inserting him tonight in an area unfamiliar to him and his fellow SEALs was pushing it.

“The intel is, Nadal returns tomorrow,” Kolt said. “He is driving the timeline here.”

CyberInternet Café, Hadda Hotel, Sana’a, Yemen

Farooq was running late this morning. At the end of the ninety-minute regulation play, the football game was tied. Farooq knew he needed to call it a night, get back to the safe house for a good night’s sleep since he had an important task the following day.

A task Nadal had spent extra time explaining the importance of, how it actually worked, and what Farooq’s responsibilities would be while Nadal was away. A task Nadal had trusted Farooq to undertake as he spent a few days visiting his father in Mecca.

A task Farooq had forgotten to do this morning. A fact that he could not share with Nadal.

Farooq wanted to get up from his seat and leave. The rain had been steady all night, slowing down the typically fast-paced game but having little impact on the excitement. But considering his excellent front-row seats at the midline were hard to come by, costing him a good amount of rupees, he remained seated. Besides, Nadal was not expected back from his Saudi trip until midday prayers the following day. Yes, he could enjoy the two fifteen-minute overtime periods—he had earned that much—and his required task from Nadal, to download the information, would still get done. But in the morning.

After the thirty-minute overtime, the game was still tied 0-0. The two opposing teams, their waterlogged and mud-stained uniforms untucked and sagging, trotted back onto the field like warriors. As they lined up near the twelve-yard line to begin their penalty kicks, hoping to outmatch their opponent and squeeze one kick, maybe two, past the opposing team’s goalie, Farooq knew he had received his money’s worth.

Now, as Farooq stood off the edge of bustling Hadda Street under the tiny awning that hung over the locked front door at a few minutes before 7
A.M
., trying to shield himself from the sprinkling rain, he was hungry but content. The game had been worth it, his team winning 1-0 on a dramatic last kick attempt. Even though he failed to get much sleep and was unable to eat anything this morning, he was pleased he had arrived before the café doors opened. He would complete his task, Allah willing, and then move into the dining area for a bowl of
saltah
. Just the thought of the national dish of brown meat stew called
maraq,
a dollop of fenugreek froth, and
sahawiq,
a mixture of chili peppers, tomatoes, garlic, and herbs ground into a salsa, put him in a better mood. Maybe he would add some rice and vegetables to the
saltah,
which would not only improve the taste but make using the traditional flat bread to scoop up the food easier.

Farooq watched the young café attendant through the glass door unlock the door and open it. Relieved, Farooq nodded but didn’t stop—he would pay him later—and moved directly to the back corner of the room. It was the most secluded of the fifteen desktop CPUs available to the public at the CyberInternet Café at the Hadda Hotel—well, number 15 to his left was the most secluded, but the prominent out-of-order sign taped to the screen forced him to settle for number 14.

Farooq slid the cracked plastic chair from the cubicle and sat down. He checked the battery life of his cell phone, logged in to the Internet, and unfolded a small piece of scrap paper he had pulled from his pocket.

Maintaining a watchful eye with his peripheral vision, Farooq accessed the browser and began reading a lengthy number-letter combination. As he did, he very carefully typed it in with his right forefinger. He waited for the underground Web site to fully load, frustrated by the slow Internet. After a few moments, happy with what he was seeing on the screen, he reached up and turned the screen a few inches away from any nosey bystanders.

Staying for the entire game was worth it, after all.

Farooq reached into the left breast pocket of his knee-length egg-white
salwar kameez
and pulled out a small yellow thumb drive. He rotated the protective cap to expose the male end and inserted it into the female end of the CPU’s single USB port. He clicked the appropriate prompts, confirming the drive was accepted and reading fully.

Farooq turned back to his cell, tapped in the three-digit international dialing prefix, then the two-digit country code, then the ten-digit number, and pushed the green
SEND CALL
button. In a few seconds, the cell phone chirped, confirming a connection with the hunting cell phone packages inside the main access facility at Yellow Creek Nuclear Power Plant across the Atlantic Ocean.

Farooq dropped his shoulders, relieved that the cell phones in the package still had battery power. Nadal had estimated the window of access, based on Abdul’s practice with dummy packages and rehearsing the U.S. mail system numerous times. Nadal was adamant that Farooq be at the café yesterday morning, when he believed the cell phones hidden inside the tubular containers would be in the middle of their internal battery’s life of eighteen to twenty-four hours, their prime hunting time. At least that’s what the vendor advertised. Farooq knew Nadal wasn’t so ignorant to rely simply on the internal batteries. Not at all. Even at its best, even if the vendor was right that it would power the phone for a full twenty-four hours, it wasn’t enough.

No, for this to work, for the cell packages to remotely pull the two dozen target sets, some 212 pages with colored photos and intricate details, from the secure LAN, the cell phones had to have much more power. Enough power to keep the cell alive, to support the attack vector, and to upload the sensitive data wirelessly, and Nadal’s university education provided him the knowledge to understand all of this. He knew special lithium-foam-cell batteries were needed. The kind that powered the latest, most powerful, featherweight laptops. Actually, they weren’t hard to find. Amazon shipped four directly to Abdul’s apartment in North Carolina.

All those late nights of studying by Nadal to earn his engineering degree, while Farooq became lazy, ignored his responsibilities, followed foosball, and even chased women, were about to pay off.

Nadal understood that America had been slow to react to the imminent international cyberthreat, and worried more about domestic eavesdropping than about protecting its own systems. He’d talked to Farooq about it at length until Farooq thought his brains would run out of his ears. Major vendors were reluctant to share lessons learned in the cybersecurity software industry. The bottom line was what mattered, and as long as the Internet was powering the hopes and dreams of millions of businesses worldwide, software vendors would continue to protect their institutional knowledge base. If Farooq had heard Nadal say it once, he heard it a hundred times:
The hardware vendors are making the same mistakes that Microsoft made twenty-five years ago.

Digital equipment, present in practically all of America’s energy-related critical infrastructure and required to manage whatever the source of electricity is—coal, wind, solar, hydro, or nuclear—is highly vulnerable to cyberattacks. To protect safe shutdown systems from cyberthreats, a defense-in-depth strategy similar to the physical protection provided by armed guards and robust barriers is needed. The security basics are fundamentally equal and equally vulnerable. Something Nadal had capitalized on fully.