Price of Duty

by Dale Brown

  But now viruses latched on to their very basic code and went to work, swiftly cutting away those parts of each program that “read” incoming sensor data. Stitched in their place were endlessly repeating loops of false data—all showing a range of perfectly safe temperatures, pressures, coolant flow levels, and neutron power.

  In a matter of seconds, both of the elaborate automated systems designed to shut down Cernavodă’s Unit Two were out of action, securely cocooned in an illusory digital world where nothing would ever go wrong.

  Now a small subroutine in the rogue program controlling one of the commandeered computers activated.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  Nicolae Diaconu closed the logbook he’d just finished signing and glanced at his display. “I’ve got a minor flag from one of the test and display computers,” he told Proca. “Says it’s getting an error reading from a neutron flux detector in Zone 11.”

  “Just one?” Proca asked. There were nearly two hundred separate vanadium and platinum-clad flux sensors set throughout the reactor core.

  Diaconu took a closer look. “Only one detector,” he confirmed. “NFS-11A.”

  Proca shrugged. “Follow normal procedure. Have the DCC test the same sensor. Let’s see if we’ve got a genuine equipment failure or just a programming glitch.”

  “Already on it,” Diaconu said, keying in a command to the plant’s main “X” Digital Control Computer.

  Neither man ever realized that this routine request for a diagnostic check on sensor NFS-11A was the detonation trigger for yet another logic bomb, this one buried deep inside the control computer’s core operating software. Line after line of malicious code spooled through the computer, rapidly taking command over specific programs used to manage the reactor and its associated systems. Another virus flashed through a link into the identical “Y” DCC running in standby mode, turning it into a slave clone of the hijacked master computer.

  In a perfectly timed, sequenced, and calibrated digital assault taking less than thirty seconds from start to finish, Unit Two’s human operators lost control over their seven-hundred-megawatt heavy-water nuclear power reactor—and all without the slightest warning.

  CERNAVODĂ UNIT TWO REACTOR CONTAINER BUILDING

  THAT SAME TIME

  Now fully in command, the sabotage programs running in the reactor’s digital control system kicked into high gear. Over the course of the next few minutes, dozens of valves and actuators opened and closed in a carefully orchestrated sequence. Thousands of gallons of deuterium-laced “heavy” water and ordinary light water used to cool and control the reactor drained away. Steel-encased cadmium rods used to adjust the fission reaction slid out of the core and locked.

  More valves opened. Pressurized helium gas reserves set aside to force emergency supplies of cooling water and gadolinium nitrate—a chemical that could poison and stop the fission reaction—into the core in a crisis vented uselessly into the cold night air outside the containment building.

  As its control mechanisms were ruthlessly and systematically stripped away, power levels inside the reactor started spiking. Temperatures inside thousands of uranium fuel bundles rose fast, heating the heavy water still surrounding them to the boiling point. This, in turn, caused the fission reaction to climb even faster.

  As minutes ticked by without human intervention or even awareness, temperatures and pressures inside Cernavodă Unit Two’s core climbed dangerously. Fuel bundles melted, sagging closer and closer together. Hydrogen gas began boiling off the superheated zirconium alloy cladding around each bundle.

  Through all of this, the computer-driven displays inside the control room showed no signs of trouble. Separate analog-driven contact alarms should have gone off as the reactor went haywire, lighting up in a dazzling cascade across control panels. Instead, these backup alerts fell prey to yet another weakness in Cernavodă’s automated systems.

  Concerned that human operators could be overwhelmed by the hundreds of alarms that might be triggered in any real crisis, the plant’s designers had installed alarm prioritization software. In an emergency, this program deliberately suppressed all minor alarms. In theory, this allowed control room operators to focus on the most serious threats they faced. What its creators failed to anticipate was the unauthorized insertion of a single line of malicious code, one that automatically defined all alarms as minor.

  And so Cernavodă Unit Two’s highly trained and dedicated control room personnel were left essentially blind, deaf, and dumb—with no way of knowing that their reactor was racing out of control, accelerating toward a catastrophic meltdown.

  MAIN CONTROL ROOM

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  Marku Proca checked his watch and sighed. Half an hour left until he could reasonably take another coffee break. He stretched back in his chair, concentrating on keeping his eyes open. Sure, Diaconu and Ion Morar, the other operator, were both capable guys, but it wouldn’t do them any good to see him slacking off on shift.

  His direct line to the turbine room buzzed.

  “Proca here,” he said.

  “What the hell’s going on down there, Marku?” a voice demanded, barely audible over the earsplitting whine of huge machinery spooling down. “We’re not getting near enough steam. Every goddamned turbine I’ve got is shutting down!”

  Proca sat up straighter, suddenly wide-awake. “What?”

  “We’re going dark, Marku! Your fucking reactor must be off-line. So why don’t I see any trip alarms?”

  Proca stared at the displays showing Unit Two’s status. Everything on his board showed the reactor operating well within normal parameters. Nothing was wrong. Nothing could be wrong. In its essentials, nuclear power generation was a simple process. A fission reaction produced heat. Water circulating through the core to cool and control the reaction turned into steam. And that steam drove turbines, producing electricity.

  He started to sweat. If one or more of Unit Two’s steam generators had blown out, that was bad. Very bad. But the only other possible explanation was even worse. What if they were facing a massive rupture in the reactor’s cooling system? A major loss-of-coolant accident, or LOCA, was the primary nightmare for any nuclear plant.

  “Marku?”

  “We’re checking,” Proca snapped, dropping the phone. He spun toward Diaconu. “There must be something wrong with the primary DCC. Switch control to the ‘Y’ computer. Now!” The younger man immediately obeyed.

  His action set off two more pieces of malware buried in their computer system.

  Immediately an alarm shrieked, accompanied by a flashing red icon on Diaconu’s display. “I’ve got a major fire warning in the secondary control area!” he yelled. “The SCA’s automated sprinklers are activating!”

  “Oh, shit,” Proca said. Unit Two’s secondary control area was designed to maintain safe operation of the plant if an accident wrecked the main control room or otherwise rendered it uninhabitable. But now, triggered by the false fire alarm, torrents of high-pressure water sluiced across the SCA’s computers, equipment panels, and other electronics—setting off a destructive chain of short circuits and overloads.

  Bad as that was, the complicated sequence of valve openings and closures set in motion by the second piece of malicious code was far more deadly.

  In seconds, the superheated steam still boiling away from the reactor found itself funneled into just one section of pipe—a section that ran right over the main control room. Under computer control, another valve at the far end spun shut. As more and more steam forced its way into the bottlenecked pipe, its internal pressure climbed higher and higher. Forced far beyond its structural limits, the steam pipe suddenly ballooned, cracked, and then blew apart.

  Jagged steel splinters sleeted outward from the burst pipe—shredding everything and everyone in their path. Marku Proca had just time enough to see Diaconu and Morar hurled aside in a spray of blood and bone. And then he broiled to death a fraction of a second later when the temperature hit
more than six hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

  Safe in a shielded area behind the wrecked control room, Unit Two’s hijacked computers continued executing their carefully laid-out sabotage programs.

  TWO

  THE SCRAPHEAP, FORMERLY SILIŞTEA GUMEŞTI MILITARY AIRFIELD, ROMANIA

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  The Iron Wolf Squadron CID piloted by Brad McLanahan strode into a huge darkened hangar. Behind him, two big doors rolled shut and overhead lights snapped back on, revealing ultramodern aircraft of various makes parked across a vast concrete expanse.

  The locals believed the old Romanian air base’s absentee foreigner owners were content to let it rot. That was exactly what Scion, the private military corporation run by former U.S president Kevin Martindale, wanted them to believe. The Scion and Iron Wolf personnel stationed here called it the Scrapheap—reflecting its decaying, disused external appearance. But behind the peeling paint, rust, and piled-up rubbish was a fully equipped operating base jam-packed with sophisticated aircraft, drones, combat vehicles, weapons, communications gear, and sensors.

  Near the far wall, a second CID already stood motionless. Still wiry and lithe in her midthirties, Charlie Turlock, dwarfed by the twelve-foot-tall machine, had her strawberry-blond head inside an open panel on one of its spindly-looking legs. Two harassed-looking technicians stood next to her.

  Brad moved up beside them and ordered the robot to crouch down. With the main hatch clear, he climbed out and dropped lightly to the concrete floor.

  “I don’t care what you’ve been told before,” he heard Charlie tell the techs. “But in my book there is no excuse for sending one of these machines out into the field with systems operating below spec. And right now this leg’s main hydraulic assembly is pegging out at ninety-four percent of its rated efficiency. That is not acceptable.”

  “Ms. Turlock,” one of the techs said stiffly. “With all due respect, Major Macomber says—”

  Scowling, Charlie whipped her head out of the open panel and turned on the tech. “Do I look anything like Whack Macomber to you?”

  “Nope,” Brad said, coming up beside her with a quick grin. “He’s at least twice as big and four times as ugly.”

  Charlie laughed. “Flattery won’t get you anywhere, McLanahan.” Her eyes gleamed with amusement. “Besides, I hear you already have a serious flame back in Warsaw. Which would explain those Polish phrases I hear you trying to rattle off so nonchalantly all the time.”

  Brad nodded, feeling his face turn just the slightest bit red.

  He and Major Nadia Rozek had been thrown together last year, when the newly formed Iron Wolf Squadron helped fight off a determined Russian attack on Poland. Since then, he’d realized that the beautiful young Polish Special Forces officer was a force of nature—tough-minded, fearless, and intensely passionate. Her current duties as a military aide to Poland’s president, Piotr Wilk, tied her to the capital more than she would like, especially when Brad’s own assignments took him farther afield. But whenever they could, they spent every waking and sleeping moment in each other’s company. And a relationship he’d first imagined was just a whirlwind “girl in every foreign port” kind of fling now showed every sign of turning into something a heck of a lot more serious.

  Still smiling, Charlie took his arm. “C’mon, Brad, you can buy me a glass of wine at the canteen and then keep me company while I write up my report on tonight’s exercise.” She waggled a stern finger at him. “A report that will include a full and honest evaluation of that crazy-assed stunt you pulled off.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Brad agreed, relieved that she was letting him off the hook.

  She glanced back over her shoulder at the two technicians. “And in the meantime, you guys are going to bring that unit up to one hundred percent status ASAP—even if you have to pull the whole leg assembly and replace every power coupling and fluid line. Got it?” Glum-faced, they nodded.

  Once they were out of earshot, Brad asked, “Kinda hard-assed, weren’t you?”

  “Yep.” Charlie nodded. “But that’s one of the reasons I’m out here in the Romanian boonies instead of kicking back in my nice cushy Sky Masters lab.” She shook her head. “Look, Wayne Macomber’s a rocking, socking soldier and a damned fine tactician, but you and I both know he doesn’t much like CIDs. He’ll fight in them when he has to, but basically they give him the creeps.”

  That was true, Brad knew. He’d often heard the big, powerfully built Iron Wolf ground forces commander bitching about feeling like a slave to the “damned unholy gadget” whenever he piloted a CID. “So?”

  “So he’s got kind of a blind spot when it comes to their proper care and feeding,” Charlie said quietly. “The Russians may still be licking their wounds from last year, but they’ll be back—and probably sooner rather than later. And when they come, you’re going to need every CID and other piece of high-tech military hardware you can scrounge as a force multiplier. So you’re gonna want everything in tip-top fighting condition, not sidelined for repairs because someone figured ‘good enough’ would cut it. That’s why your dad wants me to tighten things up on the maintenance side.”

  Surprised, Brad looked at her.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, I know the general’s still alive and kicking.” She snorted. “I always knew Patrick McLanahan was a steely-eyed hard-ass. I just never figured that he’d find a way to make that literally true.” She shook her head in wonder. “Three years riding a robot full-time. Man, I wouldn’t have bet that was possible. Or sane.”

  Brad nodded slowly. Very few people knew that his father, critically wounded during an unauthorized mission against the People’s Republic of China years ago, had actually survived. Fewer still knew that only a CID’s life-support systems kept him alive. Piloting one of the huge machines sustained his crippled body, but it could not heal him. Patrick McLanahan was trapped, forced to interact with the world entirely through the CID’s sensor arrays and computers.

  Brad sighed, fighting down the painful blend of regret and relief and anger that hit home whenever he thought much about his father. It was always hard seeing the bold and daring man who’d raised him pushed off into the shadows—robbed of all normal human contact in an eerie world of binary 1’s and 0’s. But now it felt even worse.

  During Russia’s recent attack against Poland, Patrick McLanahan had revealed himself to Gennadiy Gryzlov and to Stacy Anne Barbeau, the new American president. Both were horrified to learn that the man they considered an enemy and a threat to world order was still alive. But neither political leader had known his true condition.

  Both Gryzlov and Barbeau were sure he was dead for real this time—shot down by American F-35 fighters along with the rest of the Iron Wolf bomber force flying back from an all-or-nothing strike against a Russian ballistic-missile force set to blast Poland off the map. That callous act of treachery had been the price demanded by Gryzlov for agreeing not to drag the United States into a war Stacy Anne Barbeau feared. It was a price she had been gullible enough and cowardly enough to pay, even at the cost of shattering the NATO alliance.

  “Sorry, Brad,” he heard Charlie say softly. “I know it sucks.” She rested her hand lightly on his arm.

  He forced himself to smile and squared his shoulders. “Now about that drink you wanted—”

  “Captain McLanahan!” he heard someone call out.

  He looked around, seeing a Scion staffer hurrying down the hall toward them.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re needed in the communications center, sir,” the man said tersely. “There’s a secure call for you from Mr. Martindale. He’s got President Wilk on the same line. Priority Alpha One. All Scion and Iron Wolf stations are going on full alert.”

  Brad felt cold. Short of a surprise air or missile attack on Warsaw or some other allied population center, he couldn’t imagine much else that would trigger that kind of move.

  “I’ll tag along, if you don’t mind,” Charlie said. Her
mouth twisted in a sly grin. “You know I always hate to miss a party.”

  ABOARD AN XV-40 SPARROWHAWK TILT-ROTOR, OVER ROMANIA

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  “Tak, panie prezydencie. Yes, Mr. President,” Brad McLanahan said, speaking loud enough into the mic to be heard over the pounding roar of the Sparrowhawk’s huge propellers. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Very good, Captain,” Piotr Wilk said gravely. “You should know that this appeal for our help comes from the very highest levels of the Romanian government. President Dumitru himself assures me they have no other hope of averting disaster. Unless someone can get inside Cernavodă and manually activate whatever shutdown and emergency cooling systems survive, his experts believe the reactor containment building will rupture—”

  “Spewing radiation across Romania and a hell of a lot of central Europe,” Brad said impatiently. “With respect, sir, the situation’s pretty clear.”

  “All normal and fucked up, yes?”

  “As per usual,” Brad agreed. The Polish president’s grasp of American military slang kept growing by leaps and bounds.

  The Sparrowhawk banked sharply, slowing fast as its propellers swiveled upward, turning into rotors. Through the cockpit windows, he caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a large industrial complex, eerily bathed in spotlights. Flashing blue and red lights showed a sea of emergency vehicles—fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars—surrounding the power plant.

  “We’re at the reactor site,” he reported. “I’ve got to go, Mr. President. It’s time to suit up.”

  “Understood,” Wilk replied. “Good luck.” He paused, and then said carefully, “There is one more person here who wishes to speak to you. She is . . . most insistent.”

  Brad swallowed hard. “Hi, Nadia,” he said, trying to sound casual.