Virus

by Bill Buchanan

  Fog don 7 figure! he thought, when suddenly he yanked his binoculars away from his eyes. Blinking his eyes clear, he tried to remove the spots from his vision. Feeling helpless and scared, for a few seconds he believed he was going blind. Covering his eyes, gradually the spots disappeared and his sight returned. Eyes must be playing tricks on me, he concluded. Musta looked at the sun somehow. You don 7 see falling stars in broad daylight!

  Once recovered, he climbed back into his pickup and raced up the hill to get a better look.

  Touched by an invisible infrared laser beam, fresh snow around the Roaring Creek Earth Station had been vaporized—no fire because of the moisture, just fog. In just under ten seconds, the DEWSAT painted a rectangular section of snow along the Pennsylvania hilltop about half the length of a football field, creating a rectangular block of fog.

  As he raced toward the hilltop, a slight breeze blew, rounding off the edges of the fog block. By the time the technician drove into the Roaring Creek parking lot, the dense fog had spread across the hilltop and all five large satellite dishes were visible.

  Strange, I woulda sworn that fog hank had sides, he thought, scanning the top of the windowless communications building through his binoculars. Dishes look all right.

  Then he noticed the snow. Snow around the building had vanished .. . like an early thaw, only this thaw had edges— a boundary box of ice marking where the thaw stopped.

  Nobody’s gonna believe this, he thought, grabbing his VCR camera. “Wish I’d thought of this earlier,” he muttered, walking around the communications building, recording everything he saw on videotape.

  He circled the building, walking on damp brown grass, leaves, earth, and asphalt—but no snow. His feet stayed dry and warm. Snow’d vanished without a trace. About thirty steps from the building he saw ice shaped like a roadside curb, a long rounded edge of ice forming the boundary box marking where the thaw had slopped. Beyond the curb of ice lay countless acres of snow-covered hilltop. Unbelievable!

  Once the technician entered the building, it became immediately obvious that something was wrong. A loud alarm bell rang, echoing throughout the building. No one was in the front office, everyone was out working on the equipment floor. The technician glanced over the alarm board, saw the office was in critical alarm, then understood why.

  The entire satellite office had been jammed off the air. Every radio link with Europe and Freedom cut. Roaring Creek carried commercial long-distance satellite traffic to Europe and Department of Defense traffic to Freedom. Countless thousands of communication channels were out.

  Suddenly, as quickly as the radio links were jammed, they were restored. Alarm bells silenced, red alarm lights went dark.

  Once the bells were silent, the technician felt glad he’d missed the action.

  Walking through rack after rack of microwave equipment, he searched the floor for the station manager. Finally, he found him in the back corner of the building at Freedom's microwave transmitter. He came to an abrupt stop after running down the long equipment aisle. Breathing heavily, he asked the manager, “What happened?”

  “Not sure, but we’ll sure figure it out!”

  “How’d it start?”

  “Don’t know. Cheyenne Mountain pumped some data through, we lost Freedom's signal, then all hell broke loose. We got a lot of pieces to put together.”

  BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

  The manager pulled out his pager, read off a four-digit phone extension, picked up a nearby phone, and placed a call.

  A voice over the phone said, “We received encrypted message traffic just before we got jammed off the air. I think it might be important.”

  “You make any sense of it?” The manager raised one eyebrow.

  “We can’t decrypt it, but it’s not the usual message traffic. There’s at least two separate messages—one came over the DEWSAT’s command circuit, the other over Hope's."

  “Better send it over glass to Cheyenne Mountain ASAP!”

  The man at the other end of the phone understood the manager. He would send the message over landline, optical glass fiber, so the message would arrive error-free at Cheyenne Mountain.

  “Will do!” The phone call ended.

  “Something’s outside you gotta see!” the technician insisted.

  One look into the technician’s eyes and the manager knew he meant what he said.

  “OK. Show me!”

  14

  A Nightmare Come True, 12/0912014, 1614 Zulu, 9:14 A.M

  Local

  Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

  “Gawd!” The communications officer did a double take after reading an incoming message from Roaring Creek. He requested confirmation and got far more than he bargained for. Watching his TV screen in disbelief, he stared mesmerized as Roaring Creek played their videotape. As soon as he saw the tape, he charged into the Crow’s Nest conference room like a freight train.

  “General Mason!” the major puffed in a tizzy. “Just received a video from Roaring Creek. You gotta see it!” He looked around the room—top brass wall-to-wall. His stomach churned as every eye in the room focused on him, but he wasn’t about to apologize. They could polish their brass later, this was important.

  “Everyone oughta see it!” he exclaimed as he handed a message to General Mason. “I’ve seen the tape. They’re on the level.”

  Mason read the message, poring carefully over every word. At first, he found it difficult to breathe, as if he’d had his breath knocked out.

  Craven watched Mason studying the note. Looking like the world lay on his shoulders, Mason’s sad eyes revealed his innermost feelings.

  This is only the beginning, Mason thought, fearing the worst.

  Without comment, he handed the note to Craven.

  Feeling anxious about what they might learn over the next few hours, Mason asked the major to play the videotape. The officer raced out of the conference room’s swinging door and started the VCR.

  The conference room door hadn’t stopped swinging before he and two staff sergeants burst back into the room carrying color photographs, reports, and two boxes filled with VCR tapes and floppy disks.

  As the tape played, the communications officer handed Mason a set of reconnaissance photographs, still warm from the high resolution printer.

  “A Brit chopper took these pix. Arecibo’s burning. A total loss.”

  Stunned, but not totally surprised, Mason asked, “What about the men?”

  “Brits are combing the area now, looking for survivors. Bowl’s burning, can’t move in too close.”

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t know, General, but something big’s coming down!”

  “Could you be specific? What do we know?” Remembering the room might be bugged, Mason decided to plow ahead for the moment, as if he didn’t suspect a thing.

  Stumbling to find the right words, the communications officer shook his head from side to side and stammered. “We’re overrun with data and short on analysis, but I got one conclusion—somethin’s gone terribly wrong. That pattern’s consistent. We’re sorting out the details, but we’re gonna need some help.” He paused, gawking at the embattled, stonelike faces around the room. Frozen in place, staring at the video from Roaring Creek, the general’s staff looked like they belonged in a wax museum.

  “Major,” Mason urged patiently. “You were saying?”

  Blinking, the major turned toward the general, restarting his report. “Roaring Creek sent us a copy of some unusual radio traffic—messages over Centurion’s command circuits to the DEWSAT fleet. We’re deciphering ’em now, but looks like Centurion issued orders to the DEWSATs just before Freedom went off the air.”

  “I didn’t issue any orders that’d busy up our command circuits!” Mason raised both eyebrows and cut a glance across the room at Colonel Hinson. Command messages between Centurion and the DEWSAT armada should never be unexpected, never! If Centurion had issued operational orders to the DEWSAT armada without Headquart
ers’s approval, there was real danger here, perhaps worldwide danger. These messages might be hard evidence that Cheyenne Mountain had lost control of their orbiting armada. Everyone understood that Cheyenne Mountain originated all command messages, or at least they had until now.

  “No sir!” Colonel Napper announced. “We never issued ’em, but they must be important.”

  Mason spoke to one of Craven’s aides. “Get these people whatever they need. Help ’em out.”

  Unusually quiet and subdued, General Craven nodded approval. He’d listened, been silent till now, but he felt he had to say something to rally his troops.

  “People, the hard part’s behind us. We’ve made it work. Sunday, we tracked every target, found a problem, and Livermore fixed it in a day.” Craven looked around the room at the drawn, worried faces of his staff. His pep talk wasn’t getting any traction. “We’ve been up against tough problems before and worked through every one. There’s always an explanation, there’s gotta be! Our job is to find it. We’re not talking faith here, we’re talking physics! God’s glue! The laws that hold this world together! Hell, the glue works! God don’t change it overnight. Sure, we’ve got technical problems, but we’ll work through ’em. We can do it! We’ve always done it.” He caught Mason’s eye with a sincere but disappointed smile.

  Abruptly, another airman rushed into the room, delivering an armload of notebooks filled with more bad news. The communications officer quickly read over the reports.

  Overwhelmed, the officer looked at Mason. “We’re flooded with data, sir. Our phones are ringing off the wall!

  These reports indicate communications may have been disrupted all over the world. Edwards reports nuclear detonations in low earth orbit. We got reports of bright shooting stars coming in from all over the world. It doesn’t add up, sir.”

  Mason looked at Napper.

  “Talk to me.” Mason spoke quietly, looking directly in his eyes. He had his own ideas, but hoped he was wrong. “What do we know? I need ideas. We got symptoms of a big problem here.”

  “I’ve got a hunch, sir, but it’s a shot from the hip.” Sam paused for a moment to talk off-line with John Sullivan, the software representative from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He whispered something in John’s ear. John turned pale, visibly shaken, but agreed after some discussion.

  When Mason saw John Sullivan grimace, he knew his worst nightmare had come true.

  Now more confident, but with the unmistakable look of terror in his eyes, Sam stood up. Before he opened his mouth, before he said one word, the fear in his eyes cut into the soul of everyone present. Straight-faced, he spoke quietly. Every general except Mason leaned forward, straining to hear Napper’s every word. Deathbed quiet permeated the room. You could have heard a pin drop.

  “I want to be perfectly clear on this point because John and I think it’s important—it could be critical. Our information’s incomplete, but one observation is undeniable. Our problems started when Jay loaded Centurion. Let me be blunt. There’s malice here—software sabotage.”

  Mason’s mind raced ahead of the group, looking for some plan, some ordered approach to solve this problem. As Mason formulated his proposal, Craven spoke up, cutting Napper off mid-stride.

  “Sabotage, that’s a political decision, a people decision, and people decisions take time—you don’t turn a decision like that around in less than twenty-four hours.” Craven’s face turned hard. “If what you say is true, this must’ve been an inside job. But look at the facts. Who knew about our Livermore software marathon anyway? Who knew that we’d bypass our standard software testing? Almost no one! Besides, to pull off this sabotage job woulda taken moles both inside the mountain and Livermore. Statistically, the probability of sabotage is almost zero. And as a practical matter, I think it’s impossible. Too many things coulda gone wrong. Odds are with me.”

  Shaken, Sam sat down, quietly warning, “Don’t underestimate the opposition, General.” He’d worked three years for Craven and was not accustomed to having his opinion discounted or interrupted.

  Mason stood in Sam’s defense, not having heard one word Craven said. He’d formulated a plan and wanted to present it for discussion.

  “I could be wrong, Sam, and I hope I am, but as I see it, your observations cut to the crux of the matter. Software sabotage—we’re defenseless against it. We threw our software testing to the wind.” Mason didn’t look toward Craven for approval.

  Mason paused, organized his thoughts, then looked toward Sam and John Sullivan for support. “John, let’s find the problem. Assume software sabotage for now, but don’t do anything that might alarm anyone at Livermore. Begin your standard software regression testing procedures at Livermore, but accelerate them, run them round the clock. Whataya think?”

  “You read my mind, General! Livermore already started testing first thing this morning. Everyone expected it— looks rushed, but routine.”

  Looking toward Colonel Sam Napper, Mason continued. “Get us visibility, Sam. We need our eyes and ears back! We need to see what’s happening in orbit. You with me?”

  “All the way, General!” Napper exclaimed, feeling his race was about to begin. He knew what to do, and it was important. Mason felt he could see the wheels in Napper’s head spinning round. Napper’s fear had disappeared. “My crews’re working Freedom, Hope, and the BMEWS now. If Freedom or Hope whispers, we’ll hear ’em. BMEWS radar data’s the best bet until our link’s restored. We’ve lost our real-time, but we’ll do everything we can.”

  Pointing out toward the communications officer, Mason spoke softly. “Major, you’re in the hot seat here. We’ll follow your lead. Decipher those command circuit messages from Roaring Creek ASAP. Do whatever it takes. We need ’em decoded yesterday!” Mason paused, letting the major absorb his idea. Once he sensed traction in the major’s expression, he pointed to the notebooks. “Finally, get some people sorting those phone reports, generate us summary, a snapshot of what’s coming in off the wires. Get back to me in an hour with what you’ve got.”

  The major pointed to three bird colonels sitting alongside Craven. “How ’bout you, you, and you lending a hand? You heard the general, let’s do it!” The communications officer rushed out of the room followed by his two staff sergeants and an airman. Each of Craven’s aides looked sheepishly to him for approval.

  Craven nodded. “You heard the general. Do whatever it takes!” With some reservation, they filed out, following the major to the radio room.

  “Hinson,” Mason announced. “We scrub today’s High Ground testing. We’re off the air until further notice! Put your aircraft back in the barn. Keep ’em on standby. We might need ’em. And Centurion’s log—work through it with Yuri’s people. That’s our bread crumb trail out of this forest. It should tell us everything Centurion’s done.”

  Hinson agreed without argument.

  Listening from the War Room below, Shripod Addams knew his career as an Iraqi field agent was finished, but what a career. He’d been in the right place at the right time. Doing Allah’s work, he’d found the Allies’ soft spot and exploited it. The world was changing, the balance of power shifting away from the Allies, before his very eyes. Few agents ever directly observed the impact of their intelligence efforts. Addams felt fortunate to have been an instrument of Allah’s divine will. Planning his final signal to Baghdad, he knew it was only a matter of time until they found his bug in the conference room, but he’d expected this all along. He felt certain the Allies couldn’t finger him, as certain as one could be in the intelligence business. His fate was in Allah’s hands.

  Controllers on the War Room floor ran diagnostics, but found nothing wrong with their equipment. As floor activity shifted into frantic, no one noticed when Shripod Ad-dams disappeared into the rest room. He entered a stall, removed a tiny flesh-colored button radio from his ear, wrapped it in toilet paper, then gave it a flush. Satisfied, he calmly pulled a hearing aid from his pants pocket then worked it into
place. Identical in appearance to the button radio, only he knew the difference.

  Home for Christmas, 12/09/2014, 1619 Zulu

  Inside The Oven,

  Subarray Antenna Feed On Freedom's Red Face

  Tenderly caressing the old faded letter in his leg pocket, Jay felt apprehensive about moving into Freedom's microwave oven—technically named the subarray antenna feed. Standing outside the red airlock, he saw his destination down a long main corridor—a row of equipment cabinets located on the oven’s middle rack. Red and green colored safety lights lined the passageway leading from the airlock into the oven. All lights showed green, safe to pass. Moving carefully toward his destination, Jay keyed his mike and spoke to Centurion.

  “Verify transmitters’re safe.”

  “Jay, your safety is my responsibility. I take my responsibilities as seriously as you take yours.”

  Jay didn’t like having his life depend on any program with a clinker in it. He figured that Centurion had millions of lines of known good code so the odds of running the program bug should be very low. For the garden-variety program bug, he was right, but PAM was no ordinary bug.

  “Depack, you with me?”

  “Yeah—you’re on the monitor.”

  “Watch over Centurion’s shoulder for me, will ya? Help him out if that clinker shows up. He’ll understand.”

  “Jay, if I were in your position, I would request redundant coverage. We have no margin for error. You only die once.” Jay found little comfort in Centurion’s observations, however accurate.

  After moving from the relative safety of the central core into the oven, Jay decided to pick up his pace. The less time in the oven, the better.

  He attached himself to the white equipment cabinet with a strap, took off his backpack, and began replacing the antenna amps. After turning a T-shaped handle, each antenna module would slide out and he’d replace it. Once he’d swapped eight modules in the white cabinet, he closed it and moved to the red.