“Okay. North Korea is already attacking South. Iran is ready to blow through Iraq and into Jordan and Israel. Is Russia’s ComWar set?”
“They’re ready. The ComWar center we built there has impressed the Russians. They are ready to launch. This artillery duel will focus people in the north as they begin to drive through Belarus.” Gorham stared at the giant television screen on the wall. He stood in the basement of his operations center alone with Shayne. The room was cavernous, bullpen cubicles for as far as the eye could see. Their elevated command platform had three hundred and sixty degree screen capability.
“What happened at the bar, dude?” Shayne asked.
“That was a cluster,” Gorham spat.
“Chill, man. It’s all good. Just curious about a raid. That was supposed to be simple.”
“Nothing simple about a kidnapping. Somebody must have seen something in the ManaWeb.”
He and Shayne had developed their own segmented portion of the Deep Web where they did all their coding. Corporations and defense agencies around the world were constantly conducting battle within the Deep Web, stealing secrets, planting remote access Trojans, and fighting for information that could be useful in business or war.
“Man, nobody can see that. The ManaWeb is deeper than the Marianna Trench, dude.”
“The cook hacked us. Plus a big Native American guy and a blond female knew something was going down. So that’s two different somebodies.”
“Get any pictures?”
Gorham punched a button on his phone and the grainy pictures appeared on an eight by ten-foot television screen on his wall. He used his thumb to swipe through the photos until he had a clear shot of the big man and the blonde. “This one’s directly before Mini ComWar shut off the lights.”
After a few key strokes, Shayne said, “Chayton Mahegan and Cassandra Bagwell. Mahegan is former Delta Force. Been out a few years. Bagwell is technically on active duty but assigned to a special mission unit, whatever that means.”
“It means someone has figured something out,” Gorham said.
“Not possible for them to know everything.”
“They got . . . the cook.”
After a pause, Shayne looked away and then at Gorham. “The cook could be different. He was important. Any idea on who that is?”
“You’re supposed to be telling me who he is, genius.”
Shayne brushed some hair out of his face. “Right.”
Distracted, Gorham scratched his chin. “Any word on Nancy? Back to Kiev? Hiding out? Did I scare her away? Given our resources we pretty much ought to be able to track her twenty-four/seven.”
“You’re forgetting she worked here. So she knows that, too.”
Nancy Langevin was Manaslu’s chief financial officer. He and Nancy met on a dating app two years ago, fell in love, broke up, and continued working together. Originally from the Ukraine, she was a Harvard Business School graduate. Gorham had never truly moved on, though perhaps she had. A month ago, she’d told him she needed some time to, “think about us.” That was how she had phrased it.
He had told her to take the time, but knowing his deadline for this mission, had directed her to be back three days ago. He never intended to involve her in the plan, but he did need to protect her. He loved her. And he couldn’t let happen to her what was going to happen to most Americans. Couldn’t run that risk. If one in every three Americans was going to die or be wounded within the next three days, he wasn’t willing to accept those odds for Nancy.
“No idea. I’ve called. I’ve texted. I’ve e-mailed. I’ve even turned on the fiber optic cameras you had me place in her home and car. Nothing. No digital footprint anywhere.”
“She said she needed time to think. A genius with digits, but hated them just the same. Knowing how they work means knowing how to make them not work . . . mostly.”
“So, we need a decision here, boss. I know Nancy’s important. Is she worth delaying the entire operation for?”
Gorham paused. “No. Let’s do it. With the cook and the briefcase in American hands it’s a race against time, isn’t it?”
“Doubtful that they can figure out much, if any, of what we’ve done,” Shayne said. “But we’re ready.”
A beeping noise interrupted their conversation.
“That’s got to be Dax,” Gorham said.
“Yep. It’s his number at least,” Shayne replied. He punched the button to answer but the call dropped.
“What happened?” Gorham asked.
“Not sure. I’m calling him back.”
“No. That’s his one rule. Never call him. He calls us. We don’t want to compromise his position.”
“Okay. I’ll put a narrow sat shot on the geo location.”
“Good idea.”
After some maneuvering, they were staring at a forest near open grazing land and a large barn. As Shayne zoomed the satellite, the carnage was obvious. Trees were in flames, smoke wafted toward the sky. Dax Stasovich, a large man and former Serbian special operations soldier was lying prone in the middle of a dirt trail that separated two dense forests.
“Dead?” Shayne asked.
“Not possible.” Gorham’s voice was distant and far away, as if some trigger had been pulled or switch flipped. “He will find his way back.”
“Um, he looks dead. Not moving.”
Gorham shook his head, thinking not possible.
“Here’s something. North Korean television just announced that the Americans conducted a surgical strike on the presidential palace, but that Jun survived. They’re showing a video of him waving at the crowd.”
“You’re sure on the match.”
“One thousand percent.”
“Okay so it’s a doppelganger.”
“Russia, China, and Iranian governments have expressed outrage. The television is showing the crashed Reaper drone in North Korea.”
“Brilliant, yes?”
“Yes,” Shayne affirmed.
Gorham had thought the attack through. He had used a quad copter from the ruse of a factory to drop a high explosive round on the president, who they knew took his interviews in his open-air garden. The workers in the factory had built the facsimile Reaper drone expressly so that it could be crashed on the day of the attack. There would be no convincing anyone in the world that the Americans did not use the unmanned system to avert nuclear war by killing Jun.
The other half of the compound was a ComWar center prepared to communicate by satellite and send commands to the North Korean army as if Jun were still alive.
Now was the moment Gorham had been waiting for.
He stood and walked to a small platform in his command center, which afforded him a view of all the holograms, one showing the Korean Peninsula, others showing Tokyo, Baghdad, and a series of cities in northern Europe.
He stepped into a glass walled hallway ten meters long. Taking his usual stride, he walked through the Biometric Key Generator (BKG) Confirmation System that allowed him to activate the ComWar system and override the command and control architectures of the Russian, Iranian, and North Korean Armies. Staring into the eye scanner, the laser quickly flicked left and then right. A green check mark appeared in the heads-up display above his head. A second green check mark appeared once his gait had been analyzed and approved by the system.
He said, “We are bringing genius to the world,” waited a few seconds, and a third green check mark appeared, confirming his voice. A mechanical arm reached out and swabbed the inside of his mouth, retracted into the wall, and confirmed his DNA, producing a fourth green checkmark. Once the facial recognition feature was completed, the fifth and final green check mark appeared in the heads-up display.
A computerized female voice said, “Confirmed, Mister Ian Gorham.”
He stepped out of the BKG Confirmation System, spread his arms wide, as if he were on the bow of the Titanic, and said, “Execute.”
Shayne stared at Gorham, who repeated his command in a high, sh
rill voice. “Execute!”
Shayne nodded. His fingers skittered across the keyboard. Commands were sent. Satellites bounced signals back and forth. Orders were received. Machines responded. Some humans as well, but mostly machines. And back to the satellites.
They watched the giant television screens on the walls of the ManaLab. Icons moved on the diagram displaying the Korean peninsula. The North Korean military was displayed in red, the U.S. and Allied Forces in blue.
“North Korea moving into Seoul,” Shayne said.
He and Gorham turned as the hologram popped to life on the vast floor to their left. Miniature holographic images moved across a map, flowing beyond Shayne and Gorham, who had moved into the middle of the floor. They were standing about where the demilitarized zone crossed the main highway into South Korea.
“Everything working?” Gorham asked.
“There’s been some counterfire from the Americans and ROK armies. The RAT must not have affected all of the radars.”
Gorham scratched the sparse hairs on his chin and thought for a moment. Mock explosions puffed around their feet in faux fireballs, indicating real time artillery exchanges.
“That’s okay,” he said, looking at his feet. He was standing next to a holographic North Korean self-propelled artillery battery. “More like a natural thing. Shitty maintenance, but some of them work. Will make them think twice before looking for the digital aspect. How about the jets?” He looked back in the direction of where Pyongyang was on the holographic battlefield, as if looking for the jets.
“The aircraft carrier Carl Vinson got ten airplanes up and then the digital launch mechanism failed.”
“How’d they get those up?”
“The algorithm has already fixed it. Shutting down the Truman, Eisenhower, Roosevelt, and the others. That’s the point. Not everything will be perfect the first time, but ComWar automatically learns.”
“Combo of machine learning and AI,” Gorham said, referring to artificial intelligence. “Potent brew.”
The holographic display showed the North Korean army advancing along the Reunification Highway, as the North Koreans had dubbed the major traffic artery between Pyongyang and Seoul. Thousands of tanks and artillery pieces were stacked, waiting to cross the bridges emplaced by the North Korean engineers. Tanks and infantrymen were shooting at will as they advanced into the shopping district of Itaewon. The infantry protected Tactical High Energy Laser weapons developed by the Russian/Iranian /North Korean, or RINK, alliance.
While there were limits to Computer Optimized Warfare, they were few. Opposing forces could fire basic weapons such as AK-47s or M4 carbines, but those same troops frequently could not move or communicate. The cyber bomb coupled with a targeted tactical electromagnetic pulse shut down power and anything and everything connected to enemy Internet activity. The Internet of Things, once believed to be a great advantage for US allied forces, was biting their conventional forces in the ass.
“When does North Korea launch the ICBM?” Gorham asked.
Shayne had uncovered the planned launch sequence for another powerful North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile. Having tested dozens over the past several years, North Korea was demonstrating its capability to destroy parts of the United States. In the eyes of the North Korean leadership, mutual assured destruction was the only deterrent to American aggression.
“They have it scheduled for thirty minutes from now. That was before all of this happened though.”
“What better time than now?” Gorham asked. “The president is dead. North Korea will believe America did it. The real question is, can you apply the parallel algorithm?”
Shayne had found each of North Korea’s nuclear missiles—they had eight constructed and ready to fire—and could mimic the launch sequence of a nonnuclear ICBM, causing the nuclear missile to launch, as well.
“That’s heavy duty stuff, boss,” Shayne said.
“I’ll take that as a yes. So, timing? Thirty minutes?”
“If it goes, I’d recommend it goes once we’ve got Itaewon under control. Remember, I can probably do this one time and I’ll be shut down. They know I’m in their system and are chasing me through the wires. These missiles, if I can pull it off, will launch side by side, in tandem. One will overshoot Tokyo, and one will . . . hit Tokyo.” He paused, looked at Gorham. “If we do it.”
“When we do it, Shayne. And all the more reason to fire now. This is when they would strike back. We need to fire one nuclear weapon at Japan so that we can then focus on a breakout to the Pusan area in the south. We need to get to that port before any U.S. or coalition forces can to block offloading of ships and supplies. I’m watching the battlefield here and they look close enough to breaching Seoul. Let’s go ahead and launch it,” Gorham said.
He applied the same business acumen that had led to the success of his company to his military strategy. Just as he had to outmaneuver Amazon, Facebook, and Google for market share and investors, he had to constantly be thinking in terms of countering the considerable American threat to his vision of a global society. The challenge was part of the enticement. When he had started Manaslu, he’d had to overcome the first mover advantage of those three giants. The struggle had been real, but he had been successful.
Now, with lifetime financial security at such a young age, Gorham didn’t want to focus solely on dominance of the social and commercial world; he wanted political power. He had read Von Clausewitz’ On War and knew that military action was simply politics by another means. Given the state of the world today, Gorham knew that the deep political divisions in the United States and around the globe made the world ripe for a hostile takeover.
“Boss I’m talking to you,” Shayne said.
“Yes?”
“You’re sure you want to launch the nuke? It’s your one freebie,” Shayne said.
“Yes. North Korea strikes Japan with a nuke. World’s third largest economy. An extension of the United States for all practical purposes. The digital trails we’ve left for Assange and his lackeys to sniff around show Russia and Iran in full support of the North Korean weapons program and the launch. And you’ve got the follow up congrats e-mails ready for AUTO SEND from Iran and Russia to the acting North Korean president, correct?”
“Yes,” Shayne muttered.
“Okay, then. For the third time, execute,” Gorham said in an even tone.
Shayne eyed him a second and then said, “You’re the boss.” His fingers rattled across the keyboard sounding like a thousand beetles on concrete and he hit ENTER.
He panned the ManaSat camera over the Sangnam-Ri underground missile base, the location of many ICBM test flights. Two silos opened. They were maybe one-half mile apart. The openings looked like black dots on the satellite feed. Smoke boiled simultaneously from the two holes. The missiles lifted. For all practical purposes, they looked the same. Pointed tip. White fuselage. Gray rocket boosters. Flame and smoke billowing everywhere.
“Launch,” he said.
“Flight time?”
“Thirty-seven minutes.”
“THAAD defenses?”
“Should be mitigated. ManaWorm showing activated and effective against American THAAD.” Shayne had developed the remote access Trojan, ManaWorm, so that they could plant the virus on unsuspecting defense contractor weapons and equipment a year or two earlier, when Gorham had hatched his plan.
“Shadow missile effective?”
“So far. Looks like one launch. If we’re lucky, the Americans will think it’s just another ICBM tested and not even try to deploy THAAD.”
They stood in the middle of the hologram next to the 3-D image of Japan—businessmen and women walking past them at a busy intersection. Gorham had just ordered a North Korean nuclear strike in downtown Tokyo without consent of the North Korean leadership. It was nearly as simple as when a techie remotely took control of your computer to fix a problem. The cursor moved and magic happened on the screen.
“Still ti
me to abort, if you wish,” Shayne said. “I can let the inert missile hit Tokyo. Will still be an act of war.”
They watched the ManaSat screen showing the two missiles flying closely together, smoking cleanly into the sky.
“No. We’ve run models and sims on this scenario a million times,” Gorham said.
“Well, a live nuke’s still a big deal. A lot different from electrons flowing, man.”
“You in or out, Shayne?” Gorham barked. “Don’t become a weasel at the last second. The North Koreans have been wanting to do this for a while. We’re just facilitators.”
Shayne nodded. “You know I’m in. In for a zero, in for a one,” he said, referencing the code writing digits.
Exactly thirty-seven minutes of flight later, which took the inert ICBM and the nuclear warhead tipped ICBM over six hundred and seventy miles from the North Korean Launching Ground to the Shibuya shopping district of Tokyo, a five-kiloton nuclear weapon detonated.
“And,” Gorham said with dramatic flair, “we have the third nuclear weapon ever dropped in wartime and it is once again on Japanese soil. How ironic.”
Shayne remained silent, staring at Gorham’s light brown curly locks, boyish face, and deceptively athletic build. A self-proclaimed nerd in high school and college, Gorham had mastered code writing and hacking at the early age of eight, was programming at ten, and began figuring out how to synthesize the algorithms of Google, Amazon, and Facebook in his own, proprietary way. Once complete, he built his company literally out of his apartment, then migrated to an old warehouse that he transformed into a multi-billion-dollar business with an economic value worth more than any of his competitors. Stealing business using rapid algorithm integrated learning, something he called RAIL, Gorham assessed industry trends, evaluated what was trending on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Snapchat, and Google, and in microseconds, pushed that information in a relevant fashion to his customers. Some sought information, some wanted to purchase the latest trendy products, others wanted to communicate with social circles. Manaslu had it all seamlessly integrated.
It made his platform the best way to optimize combat through constant learning. He didn’t need to read the military manuals to know that not everything ever worked perfectly. On the contrary, every action or operation was inherently flawed because humans planned and operated them. He saw it every day with his patented artificial intelligence/machine learning that seamlessly conducted its own evaluations of every action and near simultaneously rewrote the code and updated the newest version of the “app.”
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