by Steven James
I could see why she looked perpetually under the gun, and I empathized with her. “Sorry. So now, today, any ideas which countries have the technological savvy to get into JWICS?”
“Right now? Russia, Brazil, Israel, China—the US—North Korea. Maybe three or four others. Probably half a dozen citizen hacker groups in China could do it.” She hesitated for a moment, then added, “As well as a handful of individuals who could pull it off.”
I had a feeling she’d been a little uncomfortable noting that individuals could hack into JWICS because she knew I’d been friends with one of those people until last year, when I figured out he was involved in a biotech conspiracy. He’d been ready to kill Lien-hua, and when I stopped him, he was electrocuted and slipped into a coma. Terry had died not long after that, and even though he’d been a traitor and wanted to murder the woman I loved, he’d been my friend for a long time before all that, and his death had really bothered me. Actually, it still did.
“Once you pwn a system,” she said, drawing me out of my thoughts, “you’re home free.”
“Pwn? You mean control it? Compromise it?”
She nodded her approval that I was familiar with the hacker term. “Once you own the source code or the rootkit, you can download or destroy data, overload circuits, transfer funds . . .” As she typed at her keyboard and eyed the computer code flickering in front of her, she continued rattling off her list: “Turn off air traffic control communication, shut down safety valves at power plants, blow up refineries, reroute trains, take hospitals offline . . .” Then she added offhandedly, “Basically, take down a country.”
Wow. This was such an encouraging conversation.
Though I knew that Iraqi insurgents had hacked into our drones, the Chinese had gotten into our power grid, and at least one of the fatal airline crashes in the last few years was due to malware in the navigational system, I tried to reassure myself that Angela was almost certainly overstating things. “But aren’t there firewalls in JWICS? Antivirus programs? Encryption software? User authentication, that sort of thing, throughout the network?”
“Forging the response to the DNS server can get you past a firewall. A skilled hacker can crack an LM hash algorithm in seconds, even NTLM hashes can be cracked quickly with pre-computed cryptanalytic tables. Getting past authentication protocols takes a little longer, but we’re talking minutes not hours. Hacking 101: identify the system’s countermeasures, probe for vulnerabilities, access the system, crack the passwords, gain privileged access, hide, exploit, transmit.” She thought for a moment. “A morale computer would be a good attack vector on the sub.”
“No good. Crewmen on a nuclear sub wouldn’t be allowed to communicate with the outside world via the web because it might give away their location.”
“Good point.” She spoke softly as she scrolled through the lines of code on her right-hand screen. “Tell me more about this hypothetical question that isn’t hypothetical.”
“To put it bluntly, I want to know if it’s possible for a hacker to remotely fire a ballistic missile from one of our nuclear submarines.”
I thought she’d be rattled by my question, but she took it completely in stride. “Once you’re at the root level and have administrator access to a weapons system, you’re only one keystroke away from Armageddon.”
“Now you’re just being melodramatic.”
She chose not to reply, and her silence seemed to buttress her point. “So are we talking a domestic or foreign threat?”
“Domestic.” Then I thought of Eco-Tech’s international ties. “But it might be internationally funded.”
“Let me think about that.” She typed quickly for a moment, then said, “I’ve got a GPS location for you.”
“Fantastic.”
She gave me the coordinates, and when I opened another tab on my web browser and punched them in, the Bureau’s satellite mapping program brought up a cabin that lay less than a mile from the Schoenberg Inn. “Give me a sec to call this in, Angela. In the meantime, see if you can come up with a way to remotely fire that missile.”
70
I phoned Tait and gave him the address. “Start there, move out. I think there’s a good chance Kayla might be there.” Then I called Natasha to see if she could go process the site.
“Do you want Jake to come with me?”
“Yes.”
End call.
Good, good, good. A break.
Back to Angela.
“Do you have actionable intel here, Pat?” she asked.
“Not yet. No.”
“But you’re thinking there’s someone who might try this? Try to hack into a nuclear sub? This Eco-Tech group?”
Everything I had so far was circumstantial, a loose network of clues all pointing in one direction, held together merely by assumption and hypothesis rather than conclusive facts: the word of an assassin, speculation about the involvement of an environmental activist group, an uncertain agenda.
“Yes.” I tried to sound more confident than I was. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
“But Eco-Tech is anti-nuke, Pat. Why would they try to detonate a nuclear weapon?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, even if they wanted to, I just don’t think they have the resources or personnel.”
“They might have a Navy information warfare officer with them.”
She was quiet. “No, I still don’t see it happening.”
“You just told me ‘one keystroke away from Armageddon.’ Right?”
“I was probably overreaching. When you’re talking about firing a nuclear weapon, there are just too many redundant systems. Don’t you need to have, what, two, three people turn keys at the same time?”
“I’d say at least that many.”
“There you go. Plus authentication codes, scripted orders, verification protocols. Even if you were able to somehow get the launch codes, one person can’t set off a nuclear device by himself. You cannot physically be in two places at the same time to turn the keys.”
“But could you bypass those two people and their keys altogether, just like bypassing the Cloud?”
Angela looked at me quizzically.
This was one time I did not want to be playing devil’s advocate. “Turning the keys doesn’t actually fire the weapon, the computer does that. The keys simply tell the computer what to do. What if you could insert the code that would tell it what to do—”
“You mean without the keys turning.”
“Yes. One person can’t be in two places to simultaneously turn two keys from different parts of a room or a sub, but one person could turn them simultaneously—”
“From inside the computer.” Her voice was soft and frangible. “Theoretically, yes, once you pwn the system.”
“You just said theoretically, Angela.”
The look of worry on her face deepened. “I’ll contact USCYBERCOM and the Pentagon. Ask them to raise the DEFCON level on the fleet of nuclear submarines, but they’re going to ask for a threat assessment, and you know how long that can take, especially without actionable intel.”
Unfortunately, I did. “Tell them it has to do with Eco-Tech and the ELF station in Wisconsin. I’ll send you all my notes. I think we should have enough to get their attention, and they can call me if they need anything else.”
“How is this related to ELF?”
For anyone else it might have surprised me that they were familiar with the extremely low frequency technology, but not with Angela. “They’ll know. Just get them the word and keep me up to speed.”
“All right.”
“I don’t know what kind of time frame we’re looking at here,” I said, “but I don’t like how quickly everything is happening here, so fast-track this.”
“I’ll make that clear.”
“And could you do me one more favor?”
Angela looked at me somewhat suspiciously. “What’s that?”
“I can’t seem to get ahold of Margaret and she was supposed t
o send me the schematics to the ELF station. Can you look them up?”
“That station has been closed down for years.”
“Wait till I send you the files.”
A pause. “If the schematics are on the Federal Digital Database, I can get them for you.”
“It might only be on the JWICS. And you’re probably going to need above top secret security clearance.”
A long thin silence. I could tell that she was evaluating my request in lieu of the conversation we’d just finished regarding the hacking scenarios. “I think Director Wellington is still in the building. I’ll track her down, ask her.”
“And if you can’t find her?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I’d worked with Angela enough to know that pressuring her any more right now was not going to help. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
“If you’re right about any of this, you don’t owe me anything.” She signed off.
I closed the chat window, forwarded all of my notes to her and to USCYBERCOM, then, as I was finishing up, I thought about the GPS location Angela had uncovered and that I’d relayed to Tait. It wasn’t far from from the Schoenberg Inn. Earlier in the day I’d had my team search the Moonbeam because of the possibility that Alexei was keeping Kayla there.
So the Schoenberg? Just get a room, knock Kayla out, lock her in there? It would keep her safe, warm, out of the picture.
I called Tait back and told him to have his men search every room of the Schoenberg while they were in the area after they’d inspected the cabin.
Then I ran down where things were at: Angela was pursuing raising the threat level and looking for Margaret, USCYBERCOM had all the data I did, Tait was having officers search the most likely locations for Kayla, and Alexei Chekov was behind bars. I had the sense that right now just about everything I could put into play on this case was in play.
Dealing with more than one investigation at a time isn’t easy, but more often than not, it’s the default setting for my life. So now, as I reviewed the objectives I’d noted earlier, I realized it was time to review the videos Torres had sent me, the ones found in Reiser’s trailer.
Still at my computer, I braced myself and then pulled up the footage that the ERT had digitized from the VHS cassette documenting Lana Gerriksen’s murder more than a decade ago.
And I pressed play.
71
CIA Detainment Facility 17
Cairo, Egypt
2:29 a.m. Eastern European Time
2 hours 31 minutes until the transmission
After wheeling into the bathroom, Terry used the cell phone to contact Abdul Razzaq Muhammad.
“Two and a half hours,” Terry said. “Your team will be here?”
“They are already in the area. Have the numbers changed?”
“No. They keep a steady rotation here. There’ll be eight to ten agents present.”
“We’ll wait until we have confirmation that the event has occurred, then we will—”
“No. Simultaneous,” Terry said. “That was our agreement. Don’t forget, I can still call this off.”
No reply.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Terry pressed him. “It all happens at 03:00 GMT.”
“My men will move in when the missile hits, not when it is fired. Sub-launched missiles are slower than ICBMs, not as accurate. It might miss the target, or it might be disarmed prior to impact.”
“It won’t miss, and once a Trident missile is in the air, it can’t be disarmed, redirected, or recalled.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Some of the newer missiles, maybe, yes. But not the older ones. Not the ones on the USS Louisiana.”
Abdul was unyielding. “We move on impact. Not before.”
After a short internal debate, Terry decided that at this point it wasn’t worth fighting about; a few more minutes wouldn’t matter in the end, not after all these months of captivity. “All right. It’ll be in the air eleven minutes. So, exactly 03:11 GMT.”
“I do not deal well with betrayal. If you don’t deliver, we will kill you, find your female friend, and she will join you in eternity, but only after my men and I have taken our turns with her.”
Spoken like a true religious fanatic.
Terry wasn’t intimidated. “I would expect nothing less.” From you, he thought. “And the money?”
“It will be transferred at 03:11 GMT. Exactly.”
The road to this moment had all begun the day Terry acquired the phone.
China’s growing weapons and economic ties to Pakistan had given him the perfect in. After he’d stolen the phone, he’d contacted his old handler from China to find out who to be in touch with in Pakistan. He bypassed the Taliban and went directly to Al Qaeda sympathizers in the Pakistani government and made Abdul Razzaq Muhammad the offer: “I will acquire a nuclear weapon from one of the United States’s Ohio Class Submarines. I will fire it at the target of your choice if you will provide two things for me in return.”
“What are those?”
“Free me from a CIA detainment facility in Egypt and wire $100,000,000 to the bank account number I provide you.”
Yes, the dollar figure was significant, but so were Abdul Razzaq Muhammad’s contacts.
Terry calculated that some of the money would come from oil, but, considering the people he was working with, he knew that most of it would come from the United States government itself, siphoned from the $2.4 billion of annual aid that the US gives to Pakistan, officially “to help the citizens of the country democratically grow their economy,” unofficially, to combat the rampant anti-American sentiment: “A core component in the worldwide fight against global terrorism.”
In other words, spend billions of American taxpayer dollars to help grow the economy of a country where nearly 70 percent of the people still think the US is their enemy, while American unemployment hovers at 10 percent.
A plan like that could only come from Capitol Hill.
After making the offer, Terry had given Abdul the information he would need to confirm his identity and qualifications, and it took the Al Qaeda operative less than a day to verify that Terry Manoji, a man who’d worked undetected as a spy for two years while employed at the NSA, was the person he claimed to be and could deliver what he said he could.
So Abdul took the proposal to his people.
Terry thought they would come back to him with an American target, perhaps one of the usual suspects: Washington DC, New York City, LA, or maybe an American embassy or military installation abroad.
But Abdul’s associates chose someplace else.
The city of Jerusalem.
“We will bring down the Zionists,” Abdul told him, “while also putting the Great Satan in its proper place of humiliation in the eyes of the world.”
Orchestrating it so that the US rather than an Islamic nation wiped out Jerusalem was brilliant in a twisted sort of way. As far as Terry could see, in one fell swoop it accomplished nearly every goal Al Qaeda ever had—humiliating America, killing millions of Jews, devastating the US economy, and effecting all of this by turning the weapons of the world’s greatest superpower against one of its closest allies.
“What about the Muslims who live there?” Terry asked. “The Palestinians in East Jerusalem?”
“Allah will welcome any of the faithful who are martyred in his name.”
Martyred.
That was an interesting way to put it.
“And the Dome of the Rock?”
“Unwavering devotion to Allah is more important than the veneration of a shrine.”
Truthfully, Terry didn’t care about either Al Qaeda’s target or their reasons for choosing it. He cared about only two things—his freedom and his reunion with Cassandra. But he needed to know how committed Abdul would be to fulfilling his part of the bargain, so he asked him, “Your own clerics have called Islam a peaceful religion. Are you sure you’re ready to go through with something l
ike this?”
“Anyone who calls my religion one of peace mocks it,” Abdul stated firmly. “Just as anyone who claims it is about war. Islam is not about peace or about war; it is about surrender. The name Muslim means ‘submission to God.’ Our religion is one of total submission to Allah—it is not about tolerance, it is not about appeasing others or compromising to make sinners happy. It is about devotion. We celebrate all that is in submission to the Creator, we fight all that is in opposition to Islam. You misunderstand if you think Muslims are for peace or for war. We are instead wholeheartedly surrendered to the spread of Islam because it is the will of Allah.”
“And your target threatens that?”
“Rejects it.” Now Abdul Razzaq Muhammad’s tone had turned cold and spiteful, and Terry could hear the man’s venomous hatred for Jews coming through loud and clear. “There is no greater calling than spreading the will of God to those who would scorn it or mock it or fight against it! Allahu Akbar!”
The rhetoric didn’t impress Terry, nor did the reasoning persuade him. As far as he was concerned, Islam was a religion of violence and totalitarianism. How else could you explain the deafening silence of the majority of its adherents to the daily suicide bomb attacks against civilians that their fellow Muslims carried out? How else could you make sense of the international outrage, protests, and deadly riots when someone drew a caricature of Muhammad or threatened to burn a Qur’an?
Even to Terry Manoji, for a religious person to place books and cartoons above human life was unfathomable. Sharia law? That wasn’t surrender to God; that was fascism.
But as long as he got his money, as long as he got his freedom, Terry didn’t care about their warped reasoning or their sophomoric and fustian ways of justifying violence in the name of religion.
And then, there was the matter of Israel’s response. Over the last few years, Israel had not been at all shy about their right to preemptively attack Iran if they thought Iran had nuclear weapons.
And of course, if there was a nuclear missile heading straight for the heart of Jerusalem, Israeli leaders would not hold cabinet meetings and forums, they would assume it was fired from the country that had repeatedly threatened their very existence.
