Rules of Engagement

by David Bruns

  Brendan cleared his throat. “If I may, ma’am. The connection between Roshed and the North Korean regime was initially uncovered by an FBI agent. I’m wondering why the FBI is not being read into this SAP?”

  Don tensed. Hellman’s desire to keep the entire operation under her purview without FBI involvement was understandable, but it smacked of politics and Brendan knew it.

  The DNI’s red lips tightened. Baxter tried to intervene, but she waved him off. “And you know this how, Mr. McHugh?”

  “The FBI agent was my wife. She uses her maiden name professionally. Soroush.”

  “I see.”

  “She has a personal stake in getting this guy, ma’am. He almost killed her. Twice.”

  Don flinched. A flush of color rose up the DNI’s throat. “May I remind you, Mr. McHugh—”

  “Captain.”

  “Pardon?” The interruption seemed to break her train of thought.

  “I’m a captain in the navy. An O-6.”

  “Very well, Captain McHugh. This is not a personal decision. There are very good reasons, operational reasons, for not involving the FBI. And since you’ve already signed on to the SAP, you will abide by my decision.”

  Brendan sat back in his chair. “Yes, ma’am.” His jaw was set in a rigid line.

  The DNI rose. “I’ll let Mr. Baxter finish the briefing. I have another meeting.” She did not offer to shake hands on the way out of the room.

  An hour later, Brendan and Don stood on the sidewalk outside the White House.

  “Well,” Brendan said, “now we know why Liz wasn’t invited this morning.” He sighed. “I can’t believe Hellman. Liz found Roshed again for God’s sake. If it wasn’t for her, we’d still be chasing our tails.”

  Don squinted up at the watery sunshine. He couldn’t imagine the relationship dynamic between Liz and Brendan now that Brendan was assigned to the SAP and was forbidden to even mention it to his spouse. He knew his friend would follow orders. “Yeah. Now we know.”

  “Do you think it’s really him?”

  “It’s him,” Don said. “It all fits: North Korea, special assignments. He’s a psychopath with a need to destroy those who took his family away from him. He’s willing to let the world burn and North Korea is the only place crazy enough to take him.”

  Brendan nodded. “Too many people—good people—have died by this man’s hand. It’s time we stop him once and for all.”

  Don watched a blood vessel throb in Brendan’s temple, the only outward sign of his friend’s rage at this monster. Twice before, Roshed had eluded them. In his wake, he’d left a trail of bodies and destruction that had sown grief into the lives of Don, Liz, and Brendan. Rafiq Roshed needed to end and they were the people to do it.

  Brendan shook Don’s hand and then strode away, his broad back blending into the pedestrian traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  The rational part of Don’s brain knew that what the DNI said was correct: The hunt for Rafiq Roshed was not personal.

  Except it was.

  CHAPTER 9

  Covert Actions Division site Pyongyang, North Korea

  The headlights on Pak’s limousine illuminated the heavy steel door set in a wall of concrete. So this was where Rafiq had set up shop for his new assignment. No wonder he hadn’t returned any of Pak’s messages. This place probably didn’t even have a working phone.

  He considered the muddy ground and his Italian leather shoes. Maybe he’d wait until tomorrow and send another message demanding Rafiq come to his office.

  Pak sighed and signaled for his chauffeur to open his door. The news he had was too good not to share now. He stepped out. Thankfully, the mud was mostly frozen.

  He approached the guard shack. “I’m here to see Jung Chul,” he said to the stone-faced soldier, using Rafiq’s Korean name.

  “No one enters,” the guard replied.

  A stray gust of wind whipped the back of Pak’s coat. “Do you know who I am?”

  “My orders are no one enters,” the guard replied.

  “Call him,” Pak said.

  The guard eyed the expensive car. Finally, he backed up and rapped on the steel door. A peephole slid open, and he spoke rapidly into the opening. The plate slid shut.

  “Wait here,” the guard said to Pak.

  “I’ll wait inside where it’s warm.”

  The guard shook his head. “Wait here.”

  After a few minutes, Pak returned to his vehicle, alternately fuming and glaring at the guard. After a wait of nearly thirty minutes, the door opened, and another guard appeared. Pak put down his window to hear the sentry.

  “He will escort you to Jung Chul,” the soldier said.

  Pak waited until his chauffeur reopened his door to step back into the cold and stalked through the now-open door into the bunker.

  Although there was no wind, the cold of the bunker seeped through the thin soles of his dress shoes. He passed two more manned guard stations before finally arriving at a brightly lit room, filled with rolling whiteboards. A bank of glowing electric heaters took the edge off the chill. Against the far wall were a cot covered with rumpled bedclothes and a small table with a laptop. Rafiq paced in front of two whiteboards covered with pictures of young men and women.

  Pak wrinkled his nose. “You live here?”

  Rafiq glanced his way, then turned back to the boards. His face was thick with salt-and-pepper stubble, and his eyes were red. “What do you want?”

  “I have news.”

  “You found a place to base my operation?” Rafiq said without turning around.

  “We got paid.”

  Rafiq grunted, not bothering to turn around.

  Pak frowned. He had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure he’d set up Rafiq’s funds in a secure way. It benefited them both. If the Supreme Leader found out Pak was skimming money …

  “I have your Swiss bank account information here.” He handed Rafiq a slip of paper. The man stared at it for a few seconds, then handed it back.

  “You can keep it,” Pak said.

  “No need.” Rafiq was staring at the pictures again.

  “I recommend you move these funds as soon as possible to a new account. I use the Caymans. I can recommend a good banker. Very discreet.”

  The other man nodded absently.

  “Dammit, Rafiq. What are you looking at?”

  “My team,” he replied, waving at a grouping of twenty or so pictures. “These are the coders. I’ve worked with most of them before. Just filling in a few gaps.”

  Pak plucked a picture of a young woman off the board. Her thin cheeks were pocked with acne and she was glaring at the camera. “I recognize her.”

  Rafiq snatched the picture back. “Her name is Yun So-won. My star pupil.” He pointed to the adjoining board. “These are the assault teams. Still working on them.” He yanked one of the photos from the board, pursing his lips as he read the back. Then he ripped it in half and let it drop to the floor, joining a pile of dozens of other torn photos.

  “Assault teams?” Pak said. “I thought this was a cyberoperation. What do you need assault teams for?”

  “Security,” Rafiq mumbled.

  “What does that even mean? Security for what?”

  Rafiq started pacing again. Pak tried a new tack.

  “I found you an operational site,” he said.

  Rafiq wheeled around, his eyes alight. “Show me.” He drew Pak to a table where he had a stack of maps. Pak watched him flip aside a street map of Beijing to reveal a map of North Korea. He pointed. “Where?”

  Pak traced his finger along the east coast of the DPRK until he found the city of Hwadae. He tapped a small island just off the coast. “Yang-do Island,” he said. “This used to be a missile launch facility. We stopped using it a few years ago after we commissioned the new base to the north. Power and telecom are supplied via submarine cables from the mainland. Very secure.”

  Rafiq scratched at his beard, nodding. “Perfect. When can we
move?”

  “Depends, Rafiq. When will the code be ready?”

  Rafiq looked at him with surprise. “The code’s done. It’s been ready for nearly a year. All that was lacking was the right opportunity. Once I have my assault teams, we can start. Maybe a month of training.”

  Pak remembered the map of Beijing. “Tell me again why you need assault teams.”

  Rafiq smiled. Not a nice smile. “Security. Some of the code has to be handled using new methods.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to, Pak.” He considered Pak’s Italian loafers with a look of disdain. “We each have our part to play. You concentrate on getting paid. I’ll do the rest when I’m ready.”

  “And when the Supreme Leader gives his permission, right?”

  But Rafiq had turned back to his whiteboard of young North Korean faces. “Of course, Pak. Whatever the Supreme Leader wants.”

  CHAPTER 10

  US Cyber Command, Fort Meade, Maryland

  Best. Thanksgiving. Ever.

  If the statement wouldn’t have hurt her parents’ feelings so much, that’s what Dre Ramirez would have said to her mother in her daily call home. She slipped her phone back into her hip pocket and hurried across the parking lot to catch up with Goodwin and Everett.

  Although none of them had slept more than a few hours last night, they were all raring for a full day at US Cyber Command. The Hopper Center at the Naval Academy was a state-of-the-art facility, but this was so much better. This was the real deal, where real people were on the front lines of the cyberbattle that was happening every day.

  And she was about to be part of it.

  Even better, Goodwin and Everett were willing to give up their Thanksgiving break to stay in Maryland and work at CYBERCOM for the long weekend.

  “You guys ready?” Dre said, catching up to Janet and Michael.

  Janet winked at her. “We’re going to the show, Dre. On the watch floor. Time to stop some cyber bad guys.”

  Dre let the laugh that was inside her bubble out. “What about you, Mike? Not every plebe gets to do this.”

  Goodwin gave her a faint smile, as if he knew that a smile was something he was supposed to do in this kind of social situation. Dre punched him on the arm. He was a good kid, sort of like a little brother in a way. A strange duck to be sure, but the more they worked together, the more she felt like they were bonding.

  Janet approached the security desk in the lobby. “Midshipmen Everett, Ramirez, and Goodwin here to see Lieutenant Jackson.” The sergeant on duty examined their IDs, then punched a button on his keyboard.

  “She’ll be down in a minute.” He eyed their service dress blue uniforms. “Are you guys officers or what?”

  “We’re midshipmen from the Naval Academy in Annapolis,” Janet replied. “I’m a first-class—a senior. Ramirez is a second-classman, a junior, and Goodwin is a plebe, a first-year. Think of us as baby officers. And yes, you do salute us.”

  “Helluva way to spend your Thanksgiving, that’s all I’m saying,” he replied. “Ma’am,” he added.

  Lieutenant Sarah Jackson appeared behind the security desk. She held her badge over the scanner until it turned green. “Send them through, Sergeant. I’ve got them.”

  She set off down the hallway at a clip that made them hurry to keep up. “How we doing this morning, Midshipmen?” she asked.

  “Fine, ma’am,” Everett answered for them.

  “You’re done with indoc, so today we go onto the watch floor. It’s a lot to take in, so just try to keep up, okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they replied in unison.

  Jackson halted outside the door to the watch floor. “All right, we’ll be ‘ma’am’ing and ‘sir’ing each other to death here, so let’s agree on first names. I’m Sarah, and you are?”

  The three midshipmen each offered their first names.

  “Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way. Here’s the basics: CYBERCOM JIOC is the joint intel operations center. The ‘joint’ part means you’ll see officers and enlisted from all the services here, as well as plenty of civilians. We don’t often get midshipmen, so I’m sure you’ll get a few odd looks. It’s part of the drill.”

  She paused outside a set of double doors. “Behind here is the watch floor, where the action happens. I’ve got you all set up with your own workstations. If one of the watch standers wants to talk, that’s fine, but otherwise leave them be. You never know what they’re working on. Got it?”

  Dre nodded along with her colleagues. Jackson pushed the doors open.

  The room was set up amphitheater-style, with the overhead lights dimmed. Four rows of computer workstations faced massive wall screens, the center one containing a world map. Arcs of color bounced across the map at a startling rate.

  “The moving lines represent attacks—incoming and outgoing. Color-coded based on severity. Yellows are nuisance, red are the ones we really care about. This is mostly used for an overall view of the traffic level out in cyberland.” She stopped, watching the expressions on their faces.

  “Pretty scary, huh? At any minute, there are hundreds if not thousands of attacks going on against the US government and our infrastructure facilities. That doesn’t even begin to consider private servers or passive attacks, like phishing emails.”

  Dre watched the screen, trying not to let her mouth hang open. They’d seen simulations like this, of course, but this was real. These attacks were actually happening right this second.

  Jackson moved them farther along the last row. “When we find a DDoS event going on—distributed denial of service—we take steps to isolate the problem, but mostly we’re looking for an ancillary attack. Lots of times the bad guys use an assault on the front door as a way to mask something subtler going on, a sneak attack, sort of.” She stopped in front of a workstation manned by a young Hispanic man in an air force uniform. “Vasquez here is writing a script to search for instances of malware in”—she peered at the header on the screen that was waterfalling lines of code—“what looks like a water plant in California.”

  “There,” Michael said, pointing at the screen.

  Vasquez halted the screen flow. “Where?”

  “Right there.” Michael reached across the enlisted man’s shoulder to point at a line. “This has been repeated three times since we’ve been standing here.”

  “Vasquez?” Jackson asked.

  “Holy shit, ma’am, I think he’s right.” He adjusted the script and his screen lit up with highlighted text. “Wow, you just saw that by standing there for ten seconds?”

  “Midshipman Goodwin specializes in pattern rec,” Everett said. “It’s kind of his thing.”

  Vasquez shook his head. “Well, Midshipman Goodwin can come sit next to me on watch anytime he wants to. He just saved me about a shift’s worth of work staring at a screen.”

  Jackson led them to the far side of the room to three empty workstations. “Okay, now I see why Mr. Riley wanted you guys here. That was pretty impressive, Michael.” She turned to the two women. “If he’s the pattern-rec savant, what do you two do?”

  “Dre’s our coder,” Everett said. “She’s able to take what Michael needs and turn it into code. She’s good, she’s fast, and she knows Michael.” Dre blushed.

  Jackson nodded. “And you?”

  Everett shrugged. “I guess I’m the project manager. I keep us on the right track. It’s weird, but we just work better as a team. Mr. Riley saw that and wanted us here together.”

  Jackson’s gaze roamed over the trio. “Well, if Don thinks it’s the right thing to do, then I’m sticking with him.” She looked over Everett’s shoulder. “Speak of the devil, here’s Mr. Riley now.”

  Dre turned to find Don Riley crossing the watch floor with a four-star navy admiral in tow. She whirled to where Everett and Michael were inspecting their workstations. “Guys, get up! There’s an admiral coming.”

  The other two scrambled to attention as Don a
rrived. He grinned at them. “Good morning, Midshipmen.”

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Admiral, may I present Midshipmen Janet Everett, Andrea Ramirez, and Michael Goodwin. Midshipmen, this is Admiral Trafton, head of US Cyber Command.”

  The admiral was a tall, rangy woman with mouse-brown hair drawn back in a severe bun. Her eyebrows ticked up when she saw Michael’s bare uniform sleeves, indicating he was a fourth-class midshipman. “A plebe, Don? You’re starting them young, aren’t you?” To Dre’s ears, she didn’t sound happy about it.

  Riley’s laugh was strained. “No worries, Admiral. Mr. Goodwin has already validated all of his plebe-year courses and most of his second-year as well. He’s part of a pilot program to recruit the best cyber talent in the country.”

  The admiral studied Michael. “Where are you from, Mr. Goodwin?”

  “Lennox, California, ma’am,” he said.

  “Whereabouts is Lennox, California?”

  “Have you ever flown into LAX, ma’am?”

  Trafton nodded. Her eyes never left Michael’s, as if she was challenging him.

  His gaze stayed steady. “Just before you touch down on the runway, if you look down, you’ll see Lennox.”

  “I see. Not the best neighborhood, I take it.”

  Michael said nothing.

  The admiral frowned for a second, then said, “Enjoy your time here, Midshipmen. I hope it’s informative.”

  As she stepped away from the group, Dre heard her say, “Okay, Don, you’ve got them here, but I’m holding you responsible if there are any issues.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Yang-do Island, off the eastern coast of North Korea

  The island location provided by Pak was perfect. Only a few miles off the coast of North Korea, the oval-shaped blob of land in the Korean East Sea was close enough to the mainland to receive supplies, but far enough away to discourage unwanted visitors. Originally a missile launch site, the island came complete with barracks for a full company of men and a blast-proof underground bunker with a missile command and control center and an independent satellite communications array. In the end, the island’s size and lack of mainland access proved to be its undoing. When the Supreme Leader wanted to expand his missile inventory, the entire operation moved to the brand-new Musudan-ri missile launch site, a brightly lit complex visible on the horizon.