Thunderbolt

by M. L. Buchman

  “Oh,” Heidi gasped out a happy sigh and put her free hand over her heart as MiNi moved in, “Happy as two mice together.”

  73

  “What in the hell was I doing in the PEOC?” President Cole roared into the Situation Room. He was beyond furious.

  Drake considered hiding under the table. Not seemly for a four-star general, but he considered it.

  Lizzy’s tiny bit of squint said that she knew all too well what he was thinking.

  It was typically a prelude to possible war that caused a forced evacuation of the President into the underground Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Not a straying NTSB investigator. Especially not one invited to DC by the CJCS.

  “The old one under the North Portico or the new one next to the West Wing?” Miranda asked completely calmly.

  “The new one under…” Cole sputtered to a halt. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my Sit Room?”

  “Listening to you at the moment.”

  Drake watched Cole, but he was looking just as confused by Miranda Chase as Drake always was.

  “To your other question: my name is Miranda Chase. I’m an investigator for the NTSB.”

  “The NTSB? The National Transportation Safety Board? That one? Was there a crash in my Sit Room?”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes. And no,” Miranda replied without even blinking.

  To Cole’s credit, he didn’t have to pause to reconnect the answers to the questions. “Oh my god. You’re the one they shot up a house over. The one in Georgetown.”

  “No sir, Mr. President. They blew up a front door, kicked down a bathroom door and a gate in that order, and tore off a rain gutter. There was no shooting.”

  Cole looked at him and Drake waited.

  “I’m told there was an invasion of DC’s airspace,” the President finally ventured.

  “Yes sir. My plane was sabotaged while I was on short final into Ronald Reagan National Airport. I really need to purchase a new ejection seat.”

  “Why is that? Didn’t yours work?”

  “It’s the original model, sir. Technically rated to a hundred meters, but practically it’s unsafe below three hundred meters. My plane was sabotaged at an altitude of less than a hundred and fifty. It seemed that my presence was important to General Drake’s ongoing investigation, so I thought it would be better to land at the Lincoln Memorial rather than die in the Potomac.”

  Cole blinked at her. “You landed by the Lincoln Memorial? Like that Cessna 172 that flew into Russia and landed at the Kremlin?”

  “No sir. Like an F-86 Sabrejet fighter aircraft on the JFK Hockey Fields. Apparently some people found this alarming. Do you wish to keep discussing this or would you rather I return to pursuing why you’ve lost nine A-10 Thunderbolt II jet fighters in the last twenty-three hours, and will be losing one or more in…” Miranda checked her watch despite the row of red-LED clocks clearly labeled by their time zones: Eastern, President (which matched at the moment as he was in DC), London, Moscow, and Beijing. “…fifty-seven minutes.”

  Cole dropped into his chair and waved a hand helplessly for them to proceed.

  Drake knew exactly how he felt.

  74

  Clarissa’s escort stopped at the lobby entry door.

  She went to turn for the Navy Mess. It seemed likely that Clark would meet her there, though she’d been hoping for the Presidential Dining Room by the Oval Office.

  They redirected her to the Situation Room entrance through the adjacent door.

  Not a social gathering—though nothing was ever just social in DC politics. She was going to be in a real meeting.

  Yes! She’d been right to accelerate Clark’s nomination to the Vice Presidency. Things were happening fast.

  Per usual Situation Room protocol, she left her coat, purse, and cell phone at security before entering. The Sit Room always surprised her. A conference table for ten people, and barely enough room for chairs lining the wall. Four large monitor screens on the far wall, and not much else to recommend it. Always dark and mysterious in movies, she was always surprised at how corporate and beige it was in real life.

  Two steps into the room, she hooked a heel and almost fell flat on her face.

  She’d expected President Cole and Clark to be waiting for her.

  Except there was no Clark.

  Instead, that awful Miranda Chase woman was there with goddamn General Drake Nason. She only vaguely remembered the Eurasian woman in the general’s uniform…Gray. Elizabeth Gray. Newly promoted to head up the National Reconnaissance Office.

  Perhaps they needed her help on… Clarissa couldn’t think of a thing.

  “Now we’re all here, we can begin,” Nason announced. “Though didn’t you need to be somewhere else, Mr. President?”

  “No place more interesting than this. Please proceed, Ms. Chase.”

  “As I had already mentioned, you’ve lost nine A-10s. At least eight of those are clearly sabotage and—”

  “Sabotage?” Clarissa’s knees went soft and the last stage of sitting in a chair didn’t go smoothly.

  This was about the A-10s.

  And no one, but no one was supposed to know that it was sabotage.

  How the hell had this weasel of a woman gotten in the middle of one of her projects again?

  Then Clarissa realized that she’d started in exactly the right place to gain deniability. “Wait? What? The A-10—like the big highway north out of London? I presume we’re not talking about that.”

  “Yes, you can presume that,” Miranda replied in that flat, sexless voice of hers. She was the most unreadable woman Clarissa had ever encountered.

  She nodded for Chase to continue.

  Clarissa was going to kill that hacker if she ever laid her hands on him.

  Her.

  It…

  Whoever.

  They were going down hard. She didn’t care that Client F had done all the hiring, and it had been her recommendation. Clarissa was going to beat Client F’s identity out of Ramson, follow the link to that hacker, and absolutely commit some murder.

  “I can only assume that the saboteur is the same one who attacked my plane,” Miranda was rambling on.

  “You were attacked?” Maybe she’d shake the hacker’s hand before she cut it off. Or maybe not. Miranda Chase was still alive after all.

  Miranda’s look either said that she didn’t like repeating things or that Clarissa should go straight to hell.

  “There have been a series of cyberattacks: either originating in or reported through the Cray XC50 supercomputer at the US Air Force Agency for Modeling and Simulation’s branch at Eglin Air Force Base.”

  As if on cue, a phone rang in the room.

  Clarissa spotted Drake Nason’s quick glance at President Cole.

  “Your meeting, Drake,” Cole waved for him to answer it. “I’m just slumming.”

  Clarissa had started to think she’d dodged a bullet with Cole in charge. But with Nason running it, she was suddenly much less sure.

  He punched the speakerphone, “Nason here. You’re on speaker.”

  Before he’d even finished the sentence an over-excited young male’s voice sounded from the phone.

  “Are you okay, Miranda?” He didn’t wait for response before continuing. “We saw the code come into the XC50, but it was sent right back out. By the time I opened the code it was too late, you were already under attack.”

  Drake was watching Clarissa across the table, for reasons she couldn’t fathom, as he asked, “Jeremy, I assume?”

  “Yes sir. Is Miranda—”

  “She’s fine. She’s right here with me. Were you able to trace the origin of the instruction?”

  “Not very far, sir. It has an IP address of Tijuana, that’s in Mexico.”

  “I know where it is, Jeremy.”

  “Right. But they aren’t set up at all for a serious attack. I mean Tijuana just isn’t a hotbed for computing infrastructure. So we looked at the prior input
s that Miranda identified as suspicious and they come from a wide variety of odd origins, but none within the US. That makes me guess they’re somewhere in the US. Kind of a natural thing to do as a hacker. I mean, I think it would be. You know. If I knew about that kind of—”

  A woman’s voice, with a thick Australian accent cut him off. “That’s all we know, sir.”

  “Okay, thank you, Jeremy. Holly. We’ll be back in touch if we need anything.”

  “Okay. And, Miranda?” Jeremy was back. “Whoever is doing this knows a lot about aircraft. Each attack has been different, leveraging a different aspect of the aircraft. We can presume from the reports coming out of Afghanistan that the plane was destroyed in midflight—perhaps an explosion. A mechanical override on Colonel Campos’ plane. A miscalibration of GPS and inertial guidance in Korea, and two mixed simulation-reality scenarios.”

  Clarissa again found herself being impressed by the hacker she’d sent to Client F.

  “The attack on my plane was hasty,” Miranda finally spoke up. “The hacker didn’t have time to study my plane sufficiently. Perhaps it was the age of my aircraft. There were any number of systems shut down, but I can think of several other choices that could have been made, which I would have been less likely to survive.”

  “Ms. Reese?” Nason turned to her.

  Here it came. The attack. The accusations. If he uncovered that she was the one who—

  “I know that your focus is legally overseas…”

  Did Nason stress “legally” or was that her imagination?

  “…but based on your prior experience with the MQ-45 Caspar drone, I was wondering if you had any insights? Or know of someone who might be able to help us quickly?”

  “Especially as the CIA lost four drones in one of the scenarios,” Miranda Chase added.

  “The CIA lost what? And didn’t see fit to report it?” Cole glared at her.

  Nason and Gray clearly knew about it. Probably from Chase.

  “I’m sorry, sir. It’s not my department. I’ll have Director Winston find out why it wasn’t reported properly. However, I do have some people already investigating that. We don’t know yet how it happened.”

  She needed to get away and collect herself. For half a moment she considered calling Rose Ramson for advice, but knew it was too soon for them to trust each other. She’d have to figure this out fast on her own.

  “If I could perhaps place a secure call?”

  Nason waved her toward one of the phone booths lined up outside the Situation Room, then turned to Miranda with some other question.

  Clarissa hurried out into the white-carpeted hall. The three phone booths stood in a line. Circular, three feet across—not made for fat men, with a brass-trimmed curved plexiglass door that swung on a circular track. The booth included a small shelf and both standard and secure phones.

  She selected the secure one and dialed.

  75

  “Shit! It’s T-X,” Harry punched the conference room speaker. “Yes ma’am?”

  “Why am I on speakerphone?” Reese’s voice snapped out.

  “I’ve been conferring with Heidi about my search for information on Senator Ramson. We aren’t coming up with—”

  “Forget about him. He’s clean.”

  “Well mostly, but he also—”

  “He’s clean,” Clarissa insisted. “Wipe anything you found on him. No, better yet, send it to me, then wipe it. I just met with him and he provided hints that the problem I was pursuing actually lies higher in the Senate Armed Services Committee. I will need everything you have on Senator Clint Howards of Arkansas.”

  Now she’s after the chairman? Heidi mouthed at him.

  Harry could only shrug. Nothing would surprise him.

  “But first, there seems to be another problem that I need your assistance on.”

  Heidi looked at him in surprise at the sudden smooth-and-calm act that Terminatrix T-X Reese was putting on.

  Told you, he mouthed at her.

  Wild.

  “What do you need, Ms. Reese?”

  Heidi made a simpering little face at him.

  “I need you to show a little spine, Mr. Tallman.”

  Heidi made a show of a big laugh, silently.

  “You too, Ms. Geller,” Reese snapped out, though Heidi hadn’t made a sound.

  Now it was his turn to laugh. But he stuck his tongue out at her instead.

  “You know the passage that you opened through our systems into the simulations supercomputer at Eglin Air Force Base?”

  All the humor of the moment died like Alien-monster acid dripping down from above.

  “I know it.”

  “We’re done with that. Close it. Erase it. It never existed. There’s a bonus for you both if you can find out who completely overstepped their mandate. If you do, shut them down so hard that they’ll never recover.”

  “Can we ask what they—”

  “No. Just let me know when you’ve closed the hole and when the contractor is permanently silenced.”

  Harry tapped a quick string of keystrokes. “Hole’s gone.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, it pays to hire the best. Now go do what you do.”

  Harry tipped his head until his neck cracked audibly. He raised his eyebrows to Heidi, who shrugged back. Then he stared at the information they’d both been watching Mickey and MiNi accumulate about Daemon.

  “Um, They’re domestic,” Harry knew that much.

  “On US soil,” Heidi added. “The CIA’s mandate is foreign only.”

  “Welcome to the games, Harry and Heidi. Just make sure they’re never found here. Or anywhere else. Message me on my phone when it’s done. Or in the Situation Room if I don’t answer right away.”

  And the connection was gone.

  “Welcome to the games?”

  “Yeah,” Heidi slumped. “First competition, swimming in shit.”

  “No, first competition is being better than Daemon when we take him or her on.”

  Now Heidi was the one trying to get a kink out of her neck.

  76

  “My people found the security gap and are closing it. It seems they’d already picked up suspicious activity and were taking care of the situation.” Clarissa sat back down at the Sit Room table, much calmer than she’d been before.

  Yes, people. The CIA knows exactly how to do the hard tasks. Like chopping off the initiative that had included so much planning, effort, and money.

  Convincing the establishment to finally mothball the A-10 Thunderbolt IIs in favor of thirty billion dollars’ worth of F-35 Lightning IIs just wasn’t going to happen this way. It was too bad. It would have meant an immense amount of money for Ramson and decades of ongoing foreign intelligence for her.

  This effort had failed.

  Time to pretend it never existed and move on.

  “The source of the attack?” President Cole looked impressed. This could be turned into another point in favor with the President for the Clark-Clarissa team. So not a complete loss.

  “They’re working on it. It’s coming off a Ukrainian server, but we think the origin is the Far East. I’ll make sure that Clark has all of the final details for you as soon as we have them.” Extra point nailed.

  “China or Russia. We should take them both down,” President Cole grumbled.

  Now there was a mandate she could live with.

  “Working on closing it,” Miranda said quietly as if speaking to no one in an empty room.

  “Yes. My people are very good.” And she would reward them…if they got that hacker.

  “Working on closing it,” Miranda repeated. “I don’t want to be investigating another A-10 crash in forty-eight minutes.”

  Clarissa was about to say that she wouldn’t be. But that might expose her hand too much. Especially if she was wrong.

  The hacker—who sometimes sounded like Madonna and sometimes like Michael Jackson—might not be stopped by the Wizard twins shutting off access. Reese had gone to a
lot of trouble to hire the best—both in and out of house.

  Thankfully, Client F had picked up the costs. No CIA money—traceable or not. He was a fixer, hence the F she assumed, for the US defense industry. Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop…maybe Thales out of France or BAE from the UK.

  Clarissa didn’t know or care who had hired him.

  The demanded price from her and Ramson? Get the A-10 Thunderbolt II out of service for the close air support role. Lockheed Martin and all of its subcontractors would benefit immensely if the A-10 was retired and replaced by the hundred-million-dollar F-35 Lightning IIs. Three hundred aircraft would make them thirty billion dollars.

  Then there were the real monetary gains for them. An F-35 cost thirty thousand dollars per hour to fly versus the A-10’s six thousand. And a lot of that money flowed back up the pipeline in terms of staff, parts, and expertise.

  Yes, the client benefitted immensely.

  But so did the military. It didn’t cost five times as much per hour for the fun of it. The F-35 was a vastly newer and improved platform—even if all those soldiers and pilots said otherwise.

  For her, the hunger to have the newest and “the best” was her leverage into so many foreign governments. It wasn’t only the forty-three billion in cash that was generated by foreign military sales each year. The intelligence opportunities escalated directly with the cost per item and an F-35 Lightning II sale garnered far more information than a hundred million in tanks or rifles.

  Ramson? No, they wouldn’t have offered Ramson money, not directly. Ah, finance his campaigns for life.

  It had been a sweet deal, but now it was gone. Or perhaps only gone for now. She’d think about different solutions later. She’d wager that Hunter and Rose might have some ideas on that.

  The US Air Force brass had been unable to kill the old plane despite their four-year effort ending in shambles by 2017.

  Congress had saved the plane.

  And now, if the plan had worked, popular opinion was supposed to damn them for it.