Savage Road

by Chris Hauty

  Since she was a child, Hayley’s almost daily runs have been an integral part of her exercise regimen. She eschews high-tech training attire, favoring her old army PT gear instead. Her gait is effortless. Automatic. With physical conditioning at peak levels, breaking a sweat requires a high-energy output. Hayley quickly overtakes a 63 Metrobus devoid of passengers lumbering south on Thirteenth Street. After fifteen minutes at a fast pace, sweat drenches her shirtfront. She eases up with that intensity, feet thinking for her as she turns east on K Street. The capital’s streets are gloriously traffic-free. Within a few minutes of easy jogging and cooling down, Hayley arrives at Franklin Square.

  Last renovated in the administration of Franklin Roosevelt and eerily suggestive of that era’s Great Depression, the park seems inhabited by ghosts of unemployed tramps and phantom breadlines. Fifteen minutes until sunrise and not another living soul is in evidence. Hayley enjoys the strangeness of the place, especially at this time of day. She customarily pauses on the west side of the park to stretch, near the commanding statue of John Barry, an officer of the Continental Navy and one of three contenders for “Father of the American Navy.”

  Andrew Wilde is waiting for her on a bench near the Barry statue.

  He says, “Too predictable. Too routine.”

  Hayley does nothing to disagree with Wilde’s assessment. She finds herself marveling at Wilde’s deep tan. When they first met, the spy explained his skin tone was a result of a vacation home in Puerto Rico. Hayley assumes this is only one more cover story. The man’s inherent gravitas convinced Hayley of the significance of his recruitment pitch. As it turned out, that first impression was fully warranted. She has gotten enough gravitas in her association with the deeper state to last a lifetime.

  “What’s up?” she asks, guarded. Andrew Wilde had only popped up like this once before when he first appeared at one of her amateur bouts at Fort Hood. Following her recruitment, their communications have been limited to encrypted messages, calls, and emails over the KryptAll phone.

  Wilde shrugs. “Checking up, face-to-face. What with the break-in and all.” He says the second sentence archly and with a tinge of mockery.

  “Are we okay here?” Her voice becomes sharper. “Am I okay?”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Have I done something to displease you or whoever it is that’s above you?”

  “You’re insecure. Why?”

  Hayley scoffs. “What’s going on? Please, sir. You owe me that much.”

  “We all appreciate the challenges inherent in your mission, Hayley. It would be impossible for me to overstate the pressures you’re under.”

  “I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me.” She feels the heat of anger, her affliction, go up a few degrees. What does he actually want?

  “Tell me more about this break-in. Could it have been a disgruntled lover?”

  “If you know enough to find me here at thirteen minutes before six, you know ‘man trouble’ isn’t exactly in the cards.”

  “Then… what?”

  Hayley stares off.

  Wilde doesn’t wait for her answer. “We’ve analyzed the images you forwarded last night. There is little question the individual is trained and professionally equipped.”

  She cannot argue with that assessment. “Nothing was found. I’m good.”

  “Why would you be targeted? A low-level staffer for an advisor to the president wouldn’t typically fall in the sphere of interest by foreign intelligence services.”

  “But that’s a possibility, sir. Or, I’m simply the victim of a very meticulous junkie.”

  Wilde stares at Hayley with a placid expression, his tan face infuriating in its impeccable smoothness. “Would you like to be replaced?”

  The question is a thunderbolt, out of the blue and shocking.

  “What? No!” Her mind races. Her worries that she has done something to displease Wilde were well placed. But why? She has filed her reports in a timely fashion and maintained perfect mission integrity. Hayley can’t think of one misstep or careless incident.

  His gaze holds hers. With a long history in intelligence work and overseas covert operations, Wilde possesses a better understanding of human psychology than many trained mental health professionals. He has Hayley Chill’s number. She will do whatever it takes to succeed at an assigned task.

  “If you’ve been compromised in any way, you’re done.”

  Hayley controls her emotions. Life as an army boxer taught her many lessons. A rudimentary one is the art of the counterpunch. “If I’m compromised, someone in the organization screwed up. Not me. Maybe if you figured out who broke, the threat could be neutralized.”

  “We’re working on it.” He doesn’t seem all that concerned, however. “This cyber business. Monroe is contacting his Russian handler?”

  “Yes, sir. We should hear something in the next day or two.”

  “Good.” Wilde stands. “We’re done here.”

  Without further ceremony, he turns and strolls quickly away, heading toward I Street along the southern reaches of the park. The first pedestrians are entering the park a few hundred feet away.

  Hayley watches her deeper state supervisor go, attempting to decipher the true meaning behind his final words. We’re done here. As with everything in this clandestine world of subterfuge and deceit, the surface of things is all for show. The real truth lies beneath that veneer. Trust no one. That was the first lesson she learned in this town, spoken to her by a mentor, the president’s assassinated chief of staff. They remain words to live by.

  * * *

  THURSDAY, 10:50 A.M. Four people await the president’s arrival in the Oval Office. Sitting in awkward silence on the couch and chairs at the opposite end of the room from the Resolute desk is Vice President Vincent Landers, National Security Agency director General Carlos Hernandez, and secretary of Homeland Security Clare Ryan. Standing nearby is senior advisor, Kyle Rodgers, with an attentive Hayley Chill at his side. She possesses the necessary security clearance in case someone needs a fresh cup of coffee, the identity of Russia’s State Duma chairman (Vyacheslav Viktorovich Volodin), or the technical name of the synthetic chemical compound more commonly known as the nerve agent VX (O-ethyl S-2-diisopropylaminoethyl methylphosphonothioate). Hayley impresses many of her colleagues in the White House with her astounding wealth of knowledge. Only her boss, Kyle Rodgers, knows her gift of eidetic memory is behind her erudition.

  The attack on the nation’s newspapers required the president’s attention. With Hayley’s pressure on Kyle Rodgers the day before, time was made in Monroe’s schedule for a sit-down with the government officials most responsible for cyber preparedness. But the meeting’s participants have been waiting for some time, Monroe’s problems keeping to a meticulously crafted daily schedule legendary. Hernandez impatiently checks his wristwatch. Clare Ryan clears her throat. Rodgers is about to stand to check on the president when the door leading to a private study adjoining the Oval Office swings open. Richard Monroe enters the room like a summer storm. Everyone stands.

  “Sorry for the delay, folks.” Monroe drops into an upholstered chair before the dark fireplace. The others take their seats as well, greeting the president respectfully. Hayley remains to the side of the room. The president knows she’s there but refuses to look in her direction.

  “So, this cyber business. Who wants to start?” the president asks.

  Clare Ryan, in her forties and possessing an efficient intensity that commands attention, beats the NSA director to the punch. “Mr. President, as you know, DHS hasn’t the mandate to provide network protection for the private sector. As much as we’d like defending the American people from these attacks—whether on the major newspapers or Iran’s Operation Ababil against the US banking system a few years back—our directives are clear. Government networks are the responsibility of Homeland Security. And we’re confident with those protections we have in place.”

  Monroe looks t
o Hernandez, a lean man in his fifties with a prominent forehead and iron-gray hair. He wears his US Army uniform with enormous pride. “Cyber Command is responsible for defending military networks, Mr. President, while the NSA is by its mandate an offensive component,” he says.

  “The private sector is expected to fend for itself?” asks Monroe.

  “Yes, sir. Entirely,” Clare Ryan says.

  “Is that something that should change?” asks Vincent Landers. As vice president, he is upset about the uselessness of his position. Only one of the manifestations of that frustration is Lander’s habit of forcing his way into a conversation with leading questions.

  Hernandez says, “Not a problem if you’ve got ten years and about that many trillion dollars to spare.”

  Monroe frowns, unhappy with his vice president’s interruption. “We have neither.”

  “Sir, as long as we can do to them what they can do to us, we’re in a stalemate not unlike the nuclear standoff of the last six decades,” Hernandez says.

  The president reacts to Hernandez’s hectoring with an exasperated sigh. “What about rogue or terrorist actors? Radical Islamists claimed credit for this latest thing. What’d they call themselves? ‘Cyber Jihad’?”

  Hernandez adopts a more respectful tone. “Mr. President, analysis and accurate attribution is in the early stages. We were able to trace the malware, in this case, a logic bomb, back to servers in Estonia.”

  “Logic bomb? What the hell is that?” asks Landers.

  Clare Ryan elbows her way back into the briefing. “Mr. Vice President, a logic bomb is a small bit of code inserted into a computer system that will set off a malicious function when specified conditions are met. In this case, servers at the targeted newspapers were wiped out simultaneously, the conditions being the time and date. North Korea, China, and Iran have used these same hijacked servers in the past.”

  Hernandez shoots an angry look at his Department of Homeland Security counterpart. Their shared animosity is well-known in Washington.

  “For the sake of getting our hands around a coherent policy, let’s agree it’s impossible to know who’s hitting us,” Kyle Rodgers says.

  “Well, that makes my job so much easier,” says Monroe, adding sarcastically, “If we can’t possibly know who’s attacking us, we can counterattack anyone we please.”

  “Mr. President, we’ve had time to study the malware used in the attack on the newspapers. It bears signatures of code we’ve associated in past attacks with the GRU’s Unit 26165,” Hernandez says, referencing a cyber-specific division of Russia’s military intelligence agency. Under the direct command of the Minister of Defense, the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation runs a more orthodox hacking operation than the FSB, which outsources missions to independent hackers and criminal groups.

  Clare Ryan scoffs. “Big surprise.”

  The general presses his case with Monroe. “Sir, I propose we respond with an action that degrades comparable assets in Moscow.”

  “Comparable assets?”

  “Computer servers at the GRU or any of the FSB’s hacking centers in Saint Petersburg.”

  Monroe dismisses the suggestion with a wave of his right hand. Everyone in the room is aware that Hernandez’s only son had been a passenger on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory in Ukraine on July 17, 2014. GRU Unit 26165 was accused of hacking the international investigations into the incident. The general’s antipathy for Russia ought to have disqualified him for the jobs he currently holds as director of both the NSA and US Cyber Command. Powerful allies in Congress, however, helped secure his position. His expertise in signals intelligence is second to none, and he is an adept administrator. Nevertheless, the president was advised by Kyle Rodgers to keep a tight leash on the general. Hernandez has been looking for any excuse to punch Moscow’s lights out since his first days running the show at Fort Meade.

  Clare Ryan seizes the opportunity to gain an advantage over her rival. “An alternative, Mr. President, might be emergency legislation that provides the funding for DHS to ramp up the defense of the nation’s most vital and vulnerable civilian targets. What’s of critical need, sir, is a federal initiative to protect our electrical grid, utilities, and financial networks.”

  Her suggestion prompts another glare from the NSA director. The kind of money she is talking about would finance an extra battle group or stealth fighter battalion. No one in Washington with any power would let a rival incur that kind of windfall, not without a fight.

  Before Hernandez can deploy his counterargument, Monroe shifts uneasily in his chair. Kyle Rodgers takes the president’s restlessness as his cue to wrap up the meeting. “We’ll table this until the folks over at Savage Road develop confirmable attribution,” he says, referring to the physical address of Fort Meade, headquarters for both the NSA and Cyber Command.

  A visibly relieved Monroe stands. “Who knows? This attack could be a one-off. We might never hear from Cyber Jihad again.” He looks to Rodgers, signaling for him to clear the room, and makes a beeline for the door leading to his private study.

  The meeting’s participants head toward the exit to the Outer Oval Office. Kyle Rodgers follows General Hernandez and Vice President Landers out the door, the men engaged in a private conversation that seems intentional in its exclusion of Clare Ryan.

  The DHS secretary pauses to buttonhole Hayley, who remained respectfully behind while the principals cleared the room. “Ms. Chill? You have a second?”

  “How can I be of assistance, Madam Secretary?” Hayley has met Clare Ryan a dozen times in the past year. She always found the older woman to be unusually inclusive and cordial, despite the difference in their government pay grades. West Wing scuttlebutt had it that the DHS secretary’s marriage was a rocky one. Hayley is sympathetic to the cabinet secretary’s plight as the only female in Monroe’s cabinet.

  “Is it my imagination, or are these meetings in the Oval becoming shorter and shorter? This is the presidency by haiku.”

  “A lot on his plate, ma’am,” Hayley says, carefully neutral.

  “We both know of General Hernandez’s penchant for blaming the Kremlin for everything but bad weather. I hope I can count on your wise counsel in a policy discussion that is certain to get rough.”

  “Madame Secretary—”

  “Please, call me Clare.”

  That sort of casual familiarity with a cabinet secretary isn’t in Hayley’s DNA. “Ma’am, I’m only a staffer working for—”

  The secretary for Homeland Security interrupts her a second time. “Your special standing with the president couldn’t even be classified as an open secret. Nor could your keen insight and true, patriotic commitment to our nation.”

  Singling her out in this way makes Hayley uncomfortable. Her role as an agent for the deeper state requires she seek neither attention nor commendation.

  “Words like ‘patriot’ are too often co-opted by politicians and ideologues, ma’am.”

  “ ‘Freedom’ is another.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What does compel you to be here, Hayley? It can’t be the money.”

  “A devotion to country, ma’am, and its Constitution. There’s never been a better articulation of democratic goals.”

  The West Wing aide’s sterling sincerity is humbling. Clare Ryan can’t help but admire Hayley. “I don’t think I have to convince you of the threat cyberattack poses for the United States. We need your help.” Clare emphasizes her last sentence with a squeeze of Hayley’s forearm.

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  The cabinet secretary smiles inscrutably and continues out the door, disappearing into the reception area. For a moment, Hayley Chill is left alone in the office where so much history has been made. The Secret Service agent was exactly right the day before. No matter how many times Hayley has ventured into this hallowed roo
m, the Oval Office never ceases to instill awe in the young woman from West Virginia.

  The vibration of her phone snaps Hayley out of her reverie. As she retrieves the device from a jacket pocket, her face reflects surprise. She can’t recall the last time her younger sister, Tammy, called.

  * * *

  SHE REQUESTS TIME off from both of her bosses, public and covert, to attend Jessica Cole’s funeral in Charleston. Kyle Rodgers tells Hayley to take as much time as she needs. Andrew Wilde is a more stringent taskmaster. He grants her only two days, barely enough time given the almost seven-hour drive. Hayley has not seen Jessica, her best friend growing up, since returning home for her mother’s funeral years earlier. They spoke a few times on the phone—desultory conversations that left Hayley somewhat depressed—but their shared, scarred history bound them in ways that can’t be said of many childhood friendships. Now Hayley is going back home for Jessica’s funeral, a disorienting event but not wholly unexpected.

  Jessica never left Green Shoals, marrying a boy from their high school and becoming pregnant almost immediately. Two more babies followed, a burden too great for the young marriage to bear. Jessica’s husband lit out for California and a less demanding future. Like many in her situation, the young, single mother developed a dependence on opiates that left her incapable of performing parental duties. The children were raised by their grandmother as Jessica’s illness devolved into a harrowing heroin addiction. Her repeated overdoses were unremarkable except for the last one that claimed her life. A motorist found Jessica’s rail-thin corpse in the bathroom of a gas station.

  Only seven other mourners attend the funeral service and interment. Drug addiction has so thoroughly ravaged the community that scenes like Jessica’s burial are sadly commonplace. Standing at the gravesite and staring intently at the coffin poised for burial, Hayley feels unconnected to the event. Rain threatens, a prospect that matches the ritual’s mood. In these circumstances and others, Hayley’s primary emotion is a pronounced lack of emotion. How strange, too, that she can’t recognize any of the faces encircling this black hole in the ground. Bearing witness to the ceremony’s dreary conclusion, Hayley reflects on her long absence from home and childhood friends, and is ashamedly grateful for it. Had she remained in West Virginia, would she have raced her friend to an even earlier grave?