Combat

by Stephen Coonts

  When he heard this, Hamud’s pace slowed. Turning, Eric saw a pained expression on the new recruit’s face. Knowing full well what that meant, the veteran Cyberknight smiled and waved his right hand in the air. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry. We’ve all been duped by some predatory sack of shit. Just make sure you don’t get sucked in here.”

  Forcing a sickly smile, Hamud nodded. “Yes, I can appreciate that.”

  “Now the DKs,” Eric went on as he picked up both his conversation and tour where he had left off, “can be quite vicious. Unlike the gremlins and lesser Viking bands, most DKs and the war bands they belong to have unlimited funds. That means they can not only buy the best that’s out there, but even when we fry their little brains, it’s only a matter of time before they come back, but only smarter and better prepared for battle.”

  “So what do you do then?” Hamud asked innocently.

  “Then,” Eric shouted, thrusting his right arm up, index finger pointed toward the ceiling as if he were signaling a charge, “we have ourselves some real fun.”

  Three

  www.quest

  With growing reluctance, Lieutenant Colonel James Mann glanced down at his fuel gauge. In his sixteen years in the United States Air Force, he had never seen that particular indicator dip so low. Drawing in a deep breath, he struggled to control his emotions as he pressed the PUSH TO TALK button. “Quebec Seven Nine, Quebec Seven Nine. This is Tango Eight Four, over.” After releasing the PUSH TO TALK button, Mann stared out of the cockpit of his F-16, vainly searching the night sky as he waited for a response from the KC-10 aerial refuelers using the call signs Quebec Seven Nine.

  After what seemed to be an eternity, Mann called out without bothering to use call signs. “Does anyone out there see anything that looks like a tanker?”

  At first no one answered as five other pilots craned their necks and searched the black sky that made their isolation seem even more oppressive, more ominous. Finally, Mann’s own wingman came back with the response no one wanted to hear. “Boss, looks like someone missed the mark.”

  Rather than respond, Mann flipped through the notes he had taken during their preflight briefing. When he found what he was looking for, he glanced up at his navigational aids. The coordinates, the time, the radio frequency upon which they were to make contact with the tankers all matched. Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be. Everything. Yet, there were no KC-10s out there waiting to greet them with the fuel they would need to complete their nonstop flight to Saudi Arabia.

  In the midst of checking and rechecking all his settings on the aircraft’s navigational system, another voice came over the air. “Colonel, I’ll be sucking fumes in a few. Maybe it’s time we start making some noise.”

  Mann didn’t answer. The deployment of his unit was part of a major buildup in southwest Asia in response to threats being directed against the Saudi government. With the exception of conversations between themselves and the aerial tanks, strict radio listening silence was the order of the day. The arrival of the air wing that Mann’s flight belonged to was meant to be a surprise to the local despot. “We’re going to come swooping down on that little shit,” their wing commander told his pilots at their final briefing, “like a flock of eagles on a swarm of field mice.” Now, as he peered out into the darkness, Mann accepted the horrible fact that the only thing he and his companions would be swooping down to was the cold, dark Atlantic below. Even if the tankers did show up in the next few minutes, which he doubted, there would be insufficient time to go through the drill and refuel all of the aircraft in the flight. Some, if not all of them, would have to ditch.

  Faced with this awful truth, Mann prepared to issue an order that went against his every instinct. “Roger that,” he finally responded with a heavy sigh. “Everyone is to switch over to the emergency frequency following this transmission. Though I know some of you will be able to go on for a while, I don’t want to make it any harder for search and rescue than it already is. As soon as the first plane goes in, we’ll circle around him and maintain as tight an orbit over that spot as we can. Acknowledge, over.”

  One by one, the other pilots in Mann’s flight came back with a low, barely audible “Roger.” With that, the Air Force colonel gave the order to flip to the designated emergency frequency and began broadcasting his distress call.

  Even before the last aircraft belonging to Lieutenant Colonel James Mann began its final spiral into the dark sea below, frantic efforts to sort out the pending disaster were already under way. When the Kansas National Guard KC-10 tanker failed to rendezvous with Mann’s F-16s at the designated time, the commander of that aircraft contacted operations. A commercial pilot by trade, the tanker’s commander was less concerned with the operational security than he was with the lives he knew were in the balance.

  Back at Dover Air Base, from which the KC-10 had been scrambled for this mission, a staff officer pulled up the tasking orders on his computer screen that had dispatched the KC-10. As the pilot of the tanker continued to orbit at the prescribed altitude, over the exact spot he had been sent to, he waited for the operations officer to confirm that they were in the right spot. Unable to stand the tension, his copilot broke the silence. “That yahoo back in Dover better get a hustle on or there’s going to be a lot of unhappy Falcon drivers out here with nowhere to land.”

  From behind them the navigator glanced down on a sheet of paper he had been making some calculations on. After checking his watch, he cleared his throat. “I’m afraid it’s already too late.”

  Both the pilot and copilot of the KC-10 turned and looked at him. In return, the navigator stared at the pilot. “What now, sir?”

  The commander of the tanker had no answer. Without a word he looked away.

  When he reached his workstation to begin his shift, Eric Bergeron didn’t bother to sit down. Posted in the center of his screen was an international orange sticky note. The reliance of some members of the 401st on such a primitive means of communications caused the young hacker to chuckle. Even in an organization whose whole existence centered on keeping a sophisticated communications network functioning properly, there were many who didn’t trust it. Of course, Eric thought to himself as he pulled the note off and read it, after seeing what people like the ones he hunted down could do, he really couldn’t blame them.

  From his little cubicle next to Bergeron’s, Bobby Sung leaned back in his seat until he could see around the divider. “I see you’ve been zapped by the overlords.”

  Waving the sticky note about, Eric nodded as he gathered up a notebook he kept next to his computer monitor. “Yes, I have been summoned.” In the parlance of the 401st, the overlords were the operations officers, the men and women who assigned the Cyberknights their missions, which the knights themselves referred to as quests. The orange sticky note, reserved for use by the operations section, indicated that this was a priority mission.

  “Well then,” Sung stated as he made a shooing motion with his hands, “begone with you, oh wretched soul.”

  Bending over, Eric contorted his expression. Then he did his best to imitate Dr. Frankenstein’s deformed assistant as he limped away, grunting as he went, “Yes, master. Coming, master.”

  In a small briefing room tucked away in one of the numerous casements that sprouted off of the long internal tunnel of the Keep populated by the unit’s operations section, Eric met with several members of the staff as well as some outlanders. The conniving officer was no less than the chief of the unit’s operations section himself, Major Peter Hines, a name that caused him much grief in an organization with more than its fair share of irreverent cynics. He sat at the head of the long, narrow table in accordance with the military protocol that the regular Army staff stubbornly clung to.

  Seated to the major’s right, along one length of the table, was the Queen of the Wizards, a title bestowed upon Major Gayle Rhay, chief of the intel section. To her left were the outlanders, outsiders who were not members of the 401st. They w
ore the typical bureaucratic camouflage that all visitors from Washington, D.C., favored, dark suits and tightly knotted nondescript ties. Farther along that side of the table was an Air Force colonel. That this senior an officer was placed to the left of the pair in civilian attire clued Eric to the fact that the outlanders were pretty well up there on the government’s pay scale.

  The presence of the outlanders and the officer from a sister service was not at all unusual. Oftentimes the 401st handled a high-priority mission that originated within another service or government agency. What was disconcerting to the young hacker was the presence of the Master of the Keep himself, Colonel Shrewsbery. Seated away from the table against the wall, Shrewsbery was situated in such a manner that only Hines could see him without having to turn his head. Eric had noted that Shrewsbery often did this when one of his subordinates was running a meeting or briefing that he wanted to attend but not, officially, participate in. During the course of the proceedings the chair of the meeting would glance over to wherever Shrewsbery had placed himself, checking for subtle signals from the colonel. There was, Eric concluded long ago, a sort of mental telepathy used by the careerists within the unit that neither he nor any of the other Cyberknights were privy to. Not that he wanted to be part of that strange clique.

  Without preamble, Major Hines launched into his presentation. “Our records show, Specialist Bergeron, that you have engaged a DK using the screen name longbow.”

  Without having to look, Eric knew that the major’s use of the term “DK” had caused Shrewsbery to grimace. Despite the fact that the colonel had been with the 401st for the better part of a year, the terms his staff resorted to when dealing with Cyberknights still irked him. To him it was unprofessional to indulge in the video game terminology the Cyberknights favored. Still, like every professional officer who entered the Keep, he adapted.

  “Twice,” Eric corrected Hines. “Once just last week during our quest against the X Legion down in South America, and a few months ago when he was working with Der Leibstandart in Germany.”

  “Yes,” the major stated, annoyed that he had been interrupted. “I know.” Leaning forward, Hines folded his hands on the table in front of him. “Well, he’s back.”

  Now it was Eric’s turn to be surprised. “So soon?” Not that this was unexpected. The Cyberknights themselves had reached a consensus after their second run-in with him that longbow was a DK working for a national-level interest. That he was back already, after only a week, confirmed speculation that had been bantered about between the Cyberknights that this particularly bothersome Dark Knight had access to funds and equipment that only a well-financed organization could provide.

  Using a pause to break into the conversation, Gayle Rhay provided some additional information. “He’s currently using the screen name ‘macnife’ and, for the first time, making the hacks himself. Yesterday he hit the Air Force.”

  Looking over at the rep from that service, Eric noted that the Air Force colonel was avoiding eye-to-eye contact with anyone.

  Eric was quick to appreciate that the new screen name was a feeble attempt to cyberize the character’s name from the song “Mack the Knife.” Nor did he entertain any doubt that macnife and longbow were one and the same person. The one thing that he had learned during his tenure with the 401st was that when the military, the CIA, and the NSA were able to put aside their petty turf battles and pool their combined intelligence assets, no one and nothing could get by them. Even the most sophisticated hacker, exercising the greatest of care, left tracks that were both distinct and traceable.

  To start with, a hacker tends to use the same system and computer language. Though he may be familiar with many different types, like an auto mechanic he can’t be an expert on every system out there. So he specializes. Nor could he change his ways. As with the mechanic, every hacker has a repertoire of tools that he uses when breaking into a system and while rooting about in it. The sequence in which he employs these tools and the manner in which he operates when confronted by security systems may vary some, but not so much that they cannot be used to assist in pegging who’s engaged in making the breakin. It was this particular trait that alerted the 401st that longbow was behind the hacks made by the X Legion, for the novice hackers of that Viking band slavishly mimicked everything longbow taught them. “It’s like watching half a dozen junior longbows,” an intel Wizard told Eric when they were preparing for that counterhack.

  Even more insidious, in the eyes of a hacker, was the ability of intelligence agencies such as the NSA to ID an individual by simply studying the speed and manner in which someone typed. It was far more involved than just counting the number of keystrokes someone makes within a given period of time. Certain irregularities, such as the habit of misspelling the same word, or the use of a certain phrase, tagged an individual as surely as his or her own fingerprints. With the enormous number-crunching ability of the NSA, the American intelligence community had the capability to run the record of a hack through their library of past attacks and look for a match. No doubt, Eric thought as he listened to the briefing, longbow and all his past activities had been puked out as soon as they had done this, just as his own would if he were the target of such close scrutiny.

  “He managed,” Rhay continued, “to change the mission tasking orders for a deploying flight of aircraft.”

  “The F-16s,” Eric chirped with glee as if he had just guessed the right answer to a pop quiz. Then, when he belatedly remembered that all six pilots were still missing and assumed dead, the Cyberknight’s expression changed. “He did that?”

  From across the table, one of the outlanders joined in. “The administration considers this attack to be nothing less than an act of war.” He made this statement using the sanctimonious tone that many from inside the Beltway seemed to favor when dealing with a flyover person. “As such, the President has directed that the National Security Council come up with an immediate and proportional response.”

  In an effort to regain control of the meeting, Hines cleared his throat as he looked over at Rhay and the two outlanders, using a spiteful glance as he did so to warn them to back off. When he was ready, the ops major took up the briefing. “That’s going to be your mission, Specialist.”

  Given the events that had brought this about, Eric did his best to hide his excitement. Still, he could see something big was in the offing. “Will this be a duel?”

  In Cyberknight speak, a duel was a one-on-one confrontation between one of their own and a dark knight.

  Shaking his head, Hines continued. “No, not in the traditional sense.”

  Leaning back in his seat, Eric eyed Hines and the array of faces across the table from him. “You tagged me because I am familiar with longbow, yet you don’t want me to go head-to-head with him. Explain, please.”

  “It is obvious,” the older of the two outlanders stated, “that not only is this character very, very good, but he has the backing of a very robust and well-financed support system. This makes him a very dangerous threat, since each run-in serves to enhance both his reputation and his experience level.”

  The second outlander picked up the thought. “Since we can’t seem to terminate this particular hacker by direct means, we have been given the mission of finding another way of putting an end to his career.”

  Like a wrestling tag team, the older outlander took over. “We hit upon the idea of discrediting this hacker, now operating under the name ‘macnife.’”

  Looking back and forth between the pair of unnamed outlanders, Eric shrugged. “How do we plan to do that?”

  Used to working with the Cyberknights and the way they could become quite unruly if allowed to, Major Gayle Rhay cut in. “We are fairly confident that another nation is using macnife, formerly known as longbow, and his nation as a surrogate, a platform from which to strike at the United States.”

  “Other than raising hell and poking the tiger,” Eric asked, “what’s their motivation?”

  “
The second party, the one supplying equipment and funding to macnife’s nation for his use, may be doing so in an effort to test our computer security and try new techniques on us,” the intelligence officer explained. “By going through a surrogate, the second party nation is able to gain valuable experience without having to expose its own nation’s cyberwarfare capability to countermeasures or foreign intelligence agencies.”

  “Huh,” Eric grunted. “Sounds like a Tom Clancy plot.”

  “Were this not actually taking place,” Rhay replied, “it would make a rousing good read. But unlike a technothriller, we can’t be sure the good guys are going to win.”

  Unable to restrain himself, Eric began to grin. “So, you’ve come to me, the Indiana Jones of cyberwarfare. What, exactly, is it you want me to do this time?”

  Without any noticeable objections from Major Hines, the older of the two outlanders gave Eric a quick, thumbnail sketch of what the operation would entail. “You will begin the operation by breaking into the system used by macnife. Once there, you must establish yourself as the root, preferably without anyone noticing.”

  “Is there any other way?” Eric asked in mock innocence.

  In unison, the two outlanders looked at each other, searching each other’s expressions in an effort to determine if this was a serious question. Since neither was sure, the older outlander chose to ignore it and continue. “Now comes the hard part. Once in, you’re to assume macnife’s identity. Using his own system, you’re to access several computer systems within the nation that has been supporting macnife’s adventures.”

  “The object here,” the second outlander stated in a crisp, monotone voice, “is to create suspicion and distrust.”

  “I see,” Eric replied as he reflected upon the implications. “By making the supplier think that macnife is using their own equipment against them, you’re hoping to break this unholy alliance.”