Dark Winter

by Anthony J. Tata

  “What about Belarus?” Gorham asked, shifting gears.

  “ComWar has just initiated lights out in Minsk. Russian tanks lined up on the highway. NATO radar systems disabled. Hospitals, first responders, and emergency management networks being cyber bombed as we speak. Digitized attack messages launched to subordinate commands.”

  “Okay. Let’s move in ten minutes. What else?”

  “Understood.”

  “What is Russia saying about going to war? Why?”

  Shayne scanned two of his computer monitors and digested the information quickly. “The Russian president has strongly denounced the assassination of the North Korean leader and says the West has fired on their troops from Estonia. He’s saying that the brigade of Eighty-second Airborne troops there have conducted an act of war. That unprovoked, their howitzers fired artillery at the Russian troops along the border. His only recourse is to protect Russia by expanding its buffer zone and fighting back against the West. Have to love these automated counterfire systems.”

  “Good call on that one,” Gorham said.

  All it had taken was one mortar tube and a few thousand dollars. Shayne had used a cut-out operative to link up with a former ISIS member from Latvia. The man had gladly accepted the task, fired the rounds onto the Russian troops, and then died. It was, nonetheless, the provocation they were anticipating.

  Gorham had also inked a deal with Russia for a Manaslu factory and enterprise that would employ tens of thousands of people in the erstwhile capitalist society. That factory was over eight hundred thousand square feet and included the obligatory ComWar suite in the underground. Once inside Russia’s considerable network, Shayne had navigated his way into the inner sanctum of the Kremlin’s most classified information. Gorham and Shayne had been surprised at the level of defense that the Russian cyber experts had layered into their system. It had taken several months, and while the Cyber Command had blocked Shayne’s efforts to control the nuclear fleet, they were unable to distinguish his presence in the ComWar command center because Manaslu had built that facility. In essence, Shayne was able to issue digital orders to the front line troops if he wanted.

  “Middle East?” Gorham walked from the Japan holograph where the nuclear explosion had leveled buildings and started fires in downtown Tokyo, seemingly sucking the oxygen out of the entire country. The destruction was breathtaking. The images swirled around him as if he were walking through the smoldering embers of hell.

  He stopped some twenty paces later as he stood on the 3-D LED illuminated map near Baghdad. A hologram popped up when Shayne pressed a button. To his front, Iranian special forces were storming the prime minister’s residence during a blackout of the city. Behind him, Iranian tanks and artillery pieces were crossing the border from Iran into Iraq. As they approached each village, ComWar automatically attacked the grid with its DICE system, Directed and Integrated Cyber and Electromagnetic attack. As DICE launched, ComWar’s RAIL learning system immediately processed the effectiveness of everything, including human activity. How quickly were the tanks moving? Was the interval between the DICE attack and the arrival of the land forces sufficient? Too long? Too short? How much of the grid was shut down? Left unharmed? Were forces synchronized using air, artillery, infantry, and special forces? What was the predicted culminating point and where would refuel stops need to be made? What actions were necessary to protect logistical replenishment? Launch DICE on enemy airfields to disable control towers and fighter jet navigation systems?

  Constant learning. Constant attack. Computer Optimized Warfare.

  Beyond Baghdad, Quds Forces pushed into Syria, racing toward the Jordanian border.

  “Success in Korea. Artillery is firing relentlessly. Q-36 radars are stymied,” Shayne said.

  “Belarus is in chaos. Warsaw should be next,” Gorham replied.

  “Iran is having good success. Al-Maraki, the Iraqi prime minister is dead. They’ve inserted a Shi’a leader to take charge.”

  “Okay,” Gorham said. “Next targets. North Koreans destroy South Korea and Japan. Russia pushes all the way to Brussels and Mons to capture NATO Headquarters. And Iran destroys Jordan and Israel.”

  Shayne nodded. On the television screen, the first reports of the nuclear missile strike in Tokyo were scrolling across the crawl as muted anchors were speaking with anxious faces beneath BREAKING NEWS banners.

  “The next stage of course is total nuclear warfare. The Tokyo shot was your one blue chip. We need the biometric key for the Russian nukes to attack the U.S. and the biometric key for the Iranian nukes pointed at Israel. Based on my estimates it will take less than seventy-two hours for the United States and its allies to figure out how to remedy the RATs we placed in their weapons and airplanes over the last two years.”

  In perhaps the most comprehensive and lethal clandestine hacking effort, Manaslu’s team of code writers had easily hacked every major defense industry contractor in the western world. Minor algorithmic changes they inputted into the weapons systems’ global positioning and target homing systems resulted in major misses for today’s highly digitized weaponry. Shayne had done the initial breaches of the defense companies and then turned over the exploitation to a hacker of nearly equal skill. Gorham had named the entire effort Operation Alpine Summit for operational security purposes. The team of hackers believed they were making a video game as Shayne had placed a false environment in the foreground of the digitized environment. They had been mostly successful. RATs sat dormant for up to two years. They had full confidence, but no real idea, whether the plan would work. If it didn’t, the U.S. airplanes and cruise missiles would stymie their efforts. But the initial indicators were that the RATs were able to change at least a digit in the GPS guidance systems, steering the missiles and counterfire artillery off course, leaving U.S. forces defenseless against the lethal and kinetic armament of its adversaries.

  Now, with the conventional mission underway and his nuclear provocation in the air, Gorham needed to get to Iran where his Manaslu facility was. Like the others, it had a full command and control center that allowed only those biometrically cleared into the inner sanctum.

  He turned and spread his arms, looking out over the empty Manaslu Lab, save Shayne’s worried countenance. “Airplane ready? As we say, we’re bringing genius to the world!”

  CHAPTER 7

  THE XC-17 GLOBEMASTER CARGO PLANE HAD LANDED AT THE REMOTE airfield near the Michigan farm and picked up Mahegan and his crew, including Cassie, O’Malley, and Owens.

  Once airborne again, General Savage joined Mahegan and team in the command and control pod in the belly of the aircraft. They sat huddled in a small containerized high tech center that was secured by multiple fasteners hooked into the D-Rings and metallic ribs of the floor. They faced each other behind small platforms and each had a laptop open, except O’Malley who had three screens he was monitoring. Satellites poked from the aircraft like small shark fins along the fuselage.

  “Left the B-team behind at the barn to monitor your captives. Got Hobart and Van Dreeves in there from another team,” Savage said.

  “They’re good men, boss. Not the B team.” Mahegan knew Hobart and Van Dreeves from his operator days. They were experienced, professional warfighters. He did, however, wonder what exactly they might do with the prisoners. Neither of the men smiled much, nor did they have a whole lot to say. They were execution oriented to the max.

  “Roger. Good men. All of you,” Savage said.

  Mahegan nodded, curious. It was rare for Savage to provide a compliment and something unpleasant typically followed.

  “Sean, keep doing what you’re doing, but listen up,” Savage said.

  O’Malley nodded and continued to click the keyboard.

  Savage continued. “We’ve got a nuke in Tokyo. North Korea steamrolling through the DMZ. Artillery fire is lethal. MiGs flying at will. Same thing in Baghdad. Got a report General Saddiqi, the Quds Force commander, launched a decapitation operation and now Ir
an is pushing through Syria and leaning on the Jordanian border. Russians have crossed the border in Belarus and Minsk is about to fall. A weird synchronization between power grids, cyber capabilities, directed energy, and these attacks is being reported in all three locations.”

  “Has to be what Sean found and the cook told us,” Mahegan said. “RINK alliance—Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Simultaneous actions.”

  “Which we know are rarely simultaneous based on our experiences. So how the hell did all this happen without a whiff?”

  “Great question, general,” O’Malley said over his shoulder.

  “I know it’s a great question. That’s why I asked it.”

  Given the gravity of the situation, neither Mahegan nor his team commented on the general’s crusty remark. Too much to think about.

  O’Malley stopped typing and turned around. “Okay, I’ve still got a long way to go, but the cook has given us some direction here. I’ve found indicators in the Dark Web that Russia, Iran and North Korea have been working together for two years. They’ve been trading secrets and technology. They have partnered with someone that I’ve been unable to locate so far, but I believe it’s related to the attack at the pub. This individual or country or whatever it is, has created a form of optimized warfare. They’re attacking the Internet of Things, the bandwidth spectrum, frequencies, and electrical grids all simultaneously. Perfect synchronization or close to it, boss.”

  The plane pushed through the night. The four teammates looked at the general, waiting for him to respond. O’Malley ran a hand through his thinning red hair. Owens scratched at his growing black beard. Cassie’s brow was furrowed as she read something on her screen.

  “Can you shut it down?” Savage asked.

  “Most likely there are ground based command centers in each of these countries that communicate with a single satellite. The satellite is the big computer in the sky. Getting to that though, is impossible, I think. If we can locate the ground based centers we can put a nuke on them or potentially put troops on them if they’re shooting our nukes out of the sky,” O’Malley offered.

  “Okay, I’m breaking you into two teams of two,” Savage said.

  “No way, boss,” Mahegan replied.

  “You’re not calling the shots just yet, Jake. Listen to me and then tell me what you think,” Savage said in his harshest voice.

  “Roger,” Mahegan replied.

  “Two teams of two. Sean and Patch, you guys get Korea. Jake and Cassie, you two get Iran. We’re on our way to Wake Island in the Pacific right now. There you’ll each board a separate experimental B-2 Bomber. It will fly at forty thousand feet and deliver you close enough so that you can do high altitude opening and steer toward the target. Once you land, your mission is to disable these command centers.”

  “What about Russia?” Mahegan asked.

  “My guys at JSOC are handling that.”

  “What the hell are we?”

  “You’re off the books, Jake. The key is that between Sean and Cassie, you’ve got the capability to take this thing offline from the inside. If our cyber folks can get in, we’ll wave you off, but I may need boots on the ground.”

  “Why can’t we stay together and you put SEALs or Delta or Rangers on the others? Seems like a suicide mission. Where are these targets?”

  “Like I said. All my deployable combat cyber capability is with you, meaning Sean and Cassie. Regarding the targets, we’re not sure. We think we know where the Russian one is and SEAL Team Six is headed that way. But given all the targets we’ve got, I’ve got JSOC in a three point stance to go anywhere. I’m prepositioning them around the globe and they will be ready if you need them. The 82nd Airborne is at green ramp right now flowing onto airplanes to get forward deployed. Same with the 101st Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions. Big Army is moving.”

  Full mobilization of the U.S. Army’s rapid reaction force, the 18th Airborne Corps, was serious business. Mahegan thought of his time in the Eighty-second Airborne and Delta Force and knew that Fort Bragg was a beehive of activity right now. He imagined his team’s arc on the airplane. They would be landing on a remote coral reef in the western part of the Pacific Ocean that had just enough hardstand for a runway and a fuel pump. It was curious to Mahegan that Savage was not employing JSOC to its fullest extent against the potential targets at the nexus of the attacks. But then again, with full scale conventional and nuclear war either imminent or happening, the country would be mobilized in a way not since World War II and SEALs, Delta, and Rangers would be needed to attack high value targets such as enemy commanders and political leaders.

  O’Malley had gone back to work. Each team member scrolled through current news feeds and read updated Top Secret/Special Category intelligence that was comparted by code words requiring the most sensitive clearances.

  After an hour, he stopped and said, “Oh my God.”

  “What you got, Sean?” Mahegan asked.

  “There’s a meeting of the RINK leaders at the Iranian command center tomorrow.”

  “You’re sure, Sean?” Savage asked. Skeptical by nature, Savage had been burned before by bad intelligence. He needed no further reminder than the four people who occupied the command and control pod with him. In the not too distant past, Mahegan and Cassie had rescued Savage, Owens, and O’Malley from near death. Syrian terrorists disguised as refugees had penetrated the once secure Zebra communications system and lured each of the operatives, save Mahegan, into a trap.

  “We’ve got North Korea,” O’Malley said. “What I’ve been working on. Saw a confirmation for tomorrow from the North Korean techie reporting to something called ComWar. So I went to ComWar and pushed through as far as I could go. It kept finding me and pushing me out. But while I was in there for a few seconds I saw a response in Cyrillic that I translated as meaning they are attending.”

  “Meaning Russia and North Korea are in?” Mahegan asked.

  “Yes. Yazd, Iran,” O’Malley said.

  “Yazd. The Kharanaq Mountains. We suspect that Iran’s enrichment plant is in Yazd and that’s where the Iranians have been making nukes.”

  “That dumb ass nuke deal with Iran got us here,” Savage said, thinking. He rubbed his face and looked at Mahegan. “Jake?”

  “You know what I’m going to say,” Mahegan said. “Look at those television screens. RINK is on the move. There’s a technological thing happening here and there’s a ground military thing we need to take care of. The two are probably linked. Sean’s the best there is, but we can’t count on him beating RINK before Russia launches nukes. Being an American, a nuke in downtown Tokyo is a lot different from a nuke in downtown New York City.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” Savage said.

  “And if RINK has been able to manipulate the missiles on our airplanes, have they been able to fractionally impact the guidance systems on our nuclear weapons? In that event, mutual assured destruction only applies to us,” Mahegan continued, “because our retaliation is meaningless.”

  Everyone remained silent as Mahegan’s words soaked in. He was right. If the RINK alliance had been able to penetrate the defense contractors and military weapons development processes then what would prevent them from boring into the nuclear weapons arsenal and making a minor change that would prevent the opening of a silo, the loading of a submarine tube, the functioning of the missile in flight. With everything digitized today was it unreasonable to believe that someone could hack the system and impact the accuracy or responsiveness of the United States’ nuclear arsenal?

  It was a chilling thought. The nation’s neck would be laid bare against the fangs of the RINK wolves.

  Mahegan continued, “So we stay together as a team and jump into this meeting. Kill or capture who we can. Find out who the mysterious fourth element is. We know who the actors on the ground are, but how do we find the one synchronizing this unless we actually go in?”

  Three bells rang loudly in the XC-17.

  The loadmaste
r came running up to the command and control pod and leaned in the open door. “We’ve got Russian jets approaching!”

  CHAPTER 8

  GORHAM WATCHED ANOTHER VIDEO. SINCE HE HAD NOT BEEN ABLE to video chat Dr. Draganova at any point in the last few days, he watched videos he had secretly taped using microdrones he called ManaBlades. He had constructed them to conform to their environment. In an office they could be an additional pen in a pen well or a curio on the shelf. In Iran, they looked like desert grasshoppers perched on rocks.

  In his meeting place with Draganova, he always deployed a small moth drone to sit on a chandelier or lamp out of her view.

  He watched the video on his tablet. The black hair. The pouting lips. The sultry voice. The bare, crossed legs. One stiletto hanging off her heel, dangling by her toes.

  “Talk to me, Ian. Unpack that box. Lay it on the floor. Tell me what you see.”

  “I see myself standing on a miniature globe. Arms spread wide. Providing for the people. My people.”

  “What makes you think you can provide for everyone? The world?”

  “Because I created this company and made it bigger than anything else. Nothing can stop me.”

  “You don’t see yourself as human? Infallible? Mortal?”

  “I don’t believe in the concept of mortality, Belina.”

  “So, you can’t die? You’ll live forever?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  “In this body? Or in some other presence?”

  “Can’t you see, doctor? I’m everywhere.”