Not So Dead: A Sam Sunborn Novel

by Charles Levin

  “Sounds like our Cyber Warrior.”

  “Yes and no. This is more like a drone with some human back home on the joystick. He can strike and react, but he doesn’t need to fly home. The puppet master just turns it off and voila, our power comes back.”

  “So how do we get to the puppet master? Using your analogy, there’s no way the guys in Pakistan could ever get back to the Americans in Arizona flying the drones. There’s no trail—no breadcrumbs.”

  “I think what we need is a trap. Figure out where they’re most likely to strike next and be there waiting for them,” Bart said. “We’ve got to get inside their heads. I mean think like them and predict what they might do next. Then be there, ready and waiting for them.”

  “Well, that sounds good in theory, but how do we do that?”

  “I have an idea,” Bart said as he drummed his fingers on the keyboard.

  CHAPTER 20

  DESERT AIR

  Still in New York but dreaming of Abu Dhabi, LaSalam stood looking out the large picture window at the tall buildings and could almost see the vast desert he remembered that sprawled out beyond. It was 7:00 AM, but the sun was already bright and hot. He could see the mirage-like ripples of light mixed with heat ascending above his imaginary desert floor. Thank Allah for air-conditioning.

  He had not heard from Viktor in hours. He should have checked in by now. You couldn’t trust anybody to do what needs to be done sometimes. You just have to do it yourself. But he had important things to do here and the next phase of the plan to execute. Maybe he could do that from the US and kill two birds, so to speak.

  He daydreamed about his family who had lived in Yemen. How the adults told their children to behave or the drone would come in the night for them. Silent, deadly, unpredictable, death’s hand would reach out from the sky. These were the so-called virtuous Americans, killing indiscriminately based on shaky intelligence. Then, while he was away at university, the drones came for his family. They had done nothing, but now they were all gone. Only he and his brother survived. Somebody had to pay. They all had to pay.

  He smiled as he thought of the Americans scurrying in the dark, crashing their cars into each other, stuck in hospitals. That was just a warm-up. The first punch. The next blow would bring them to their knees. After that, maybe we’ll let them think it’s over. Just when their fear begins to subside, just when a little confidence and energy come back, the sword will unleash its killing blow. Allah will be pleased and we will be repaid for the spilled blood of our families.

  CHAPTER 21

  FLY-FISHING THE GORGE

  It was 8:00 AM and Bart had been there all night. He stroked his thin goatee, deep in thought. “I had to make a big guess and a leap of faith, but I think I’m right.”

  I opened my eyes, emerging from a daydream. I pictured myself fishing in the cool water of the Gorge. In my daydream, it was near nightfall. The clouds overhead were a soft pink and the pale evening duns were rising. I could see the occasional circles rippling in the water where the trout sipped the fallen mayflies for dinner. I cast my line back and forth, aiming high and letting my fly drift slowly on the surface. Splash. Set the hook. The sweet tug on my line as I felt the gentle pressure and vibrations of the brownie pull back. It wiggled trying to free itself off the hook that was firmly looped in its mouth. I worked the line trying to keep the pressure steady. Pull too hard and the line breaks, too loose and the hook comes free. I worked him over near the bank, wet my hand and reached under his body to see his bright orange spots and vivid green skin. Why do fish look so beautiful in the water? I held the rod under my arm and used my other hand to turn and release the hook. The fish stayed there, hardly moving. I pointed his mouth upstream so he could get some oxygen. The water had caressed me with its chill. I opened my hand and the trout began to undulate and then darted from my hand into the depths of the rushing pool. Out of sight and free.

  The clicking and Bart’s voice stirred me from my reverie. “What…what?” I said.

  Bart kept his eyes on the screen while he began to explain. “You see I created several ‘trap’ websites where I thought our bad guy might be casting about.”

  “Funny, ‘casting about.’ I was just daydreaming about fly fishing the Gorge,” I said.

  “You know domain names are cheap. So I created several trap websites like, Hospitalbomb.com, Taintedwater.com, Subwayexplosion.com…like that,” Bart continued.

  “You are a sick puppy to come up with these names, but so what—I don’t get it. Where’s the trap?” I smiled at the absurdity of the website names.

  “Well each site has maybe a page of appropriate content so it can get found in the search engines. Then, I put a tracker on each site that records the IP or originating address of the visitor. At the same time, I have a real-time scan of those addresses looking for suspicious points of origin. If our guy is doing research on one of the trap sites, we’ll know it and maybe get some clue as to his next move from the site name.” Bart leaned back and crossed his arms, still staring at the screen.

  “Very clever. Any luck?” I said. This guy never ceased to amaze me.

  “To use your fishing analogy, I think I’ve got a nibbler. Now I just need to set the hook.” I took Bart fly fishing for his first time last year. He didn’t catch anything, but he loved all the technology and gadgetry of the sport. Fish have tiny brains and we have big brains, yet we need special lines, flies and rods, not to mention subtle technique to catch them. But Bart was onto a big dangerous fish with a huge brain. A fish that could literally eat us alive if we didn’t catch him first.

  “I’ve gotten a few hits on airportdisaster.com and airtraffic-controlterror.com. I’m working the trace route now, and it looks like they both come from the same IP relayed through London and originating guess where?” Bart cracked a mischievous smile.

  “All right, I’ll play…Barin?” I said.

  “Correctomundo!” Bart exclaimed with a delight only hackers can understand.

  “OK, what’s the scenario?” I said, a little lost here.

  “Think about it. What’s the one thing a Cyber Warrior could do related to air traffic control using only his computers and the Internet?” Bart was now acting the part of the teacher and I was the pupil.

  “I suppose if he had access, he could shut down the air traffic control system and leave thousands of planes stranded in the air. That would be pretty terrible,” I said like the student not sure of his answer.

  “That’s a good start. Just leave them hanging up there, running low on fuel, dada, dada, dada. That would be pretty bad, but think like a bad guy. You’ve control of the ATC system. Now what really nasty things could you do with it?” Bart mused.

  I wasn’t sure if he knew the answer and was just testing me or merely thinking out loud. But I’m always capable of thinking evil thoughts. It’s saved my butt more times than I can count in business. Maybe we all have that ability and most of us just hide it behind a civil appearance.

  “If I was really a bad guy and had control of the ATC, I’d give the pilots destructive commands and crash planes into each other,” I said with some increased confidence and lots of dread and trepidation.

  “Bingo,” Bart said in a flat voice. There was no victory or pride of genius in this discovery.

  “So now what?” I said.

  “That’s the ten trillion dollar question,” Bart said.

  CHAPTER 22

  HITTING THE FAN

  At 10:00 AM, LaSalam stood in the midst of the “trading floor” of his New York bunker. Ironically it was located in the financial district in the sub-sub-basement of a building two blocks from the former World Trade Center. The bunker would be better dubbed their War Room. This room was equipped with the latest technology, thanks to the generous support of his backers in Barin, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

  He looked up at the wall of fifty-two-inch OLED screens that showed all the planes in the air over the US. The planes seemed to inch slowly along their
routes traced in dotted lines from their departure cities to their destination cities.

  Behind him lay neat rows of cubicles with earnest young warriors clicking away at keyboards. Each desk had three large flat-screens arrayed in front of each user, showing a different US metropolitan area and the planes above them in real-time. The similarity of the setup to an actual financial trading floor was not lost on the Leopard. In fact, he planned it that way. He liked to create his own kind of symbolic karma. That’s also why he located the War Room near the site of his mentor’s greatest victory. Airplanes again would be the weapons of choice, turned against their creators and the heathen masses. They spent their meaningless lives commuting between their centers of materialistic despair.

  “What do you think?” said Eskabar as he waved his arm in the air across the vista of busy hackers.

  “Very impressive,” LaSalam said. “You have spent the money I sent you well. Please tell me what I am looking at.”

  Eskabar began. “We have hacked into the American air traffic control system. There are approximately 3000 planes in the air at any given time. That includes small aircraft as well as jumbo jets holding hundreds of people. The Great Satan does not yet know we are watching. He will be at a loss when we take over the system and remote control all their communications.”

  “When will you be ready to launch Ghost Rider?” LaSalam said.

  “Sometime in the next twenty-four hours. I’d like to test the override first, but I’m concerned we might tip off the Americans, and they will figure out a way to stop us before we can do maximum damage.”

  “Can what you are doing be traced?”

  “Theoretically no. But the Americans have some great talent and given the time, anything is possible.”

  “Given the time. How much time?”

  “I think it will take them days to just figure out that our test is not just an ordinary accident. Then more days to attempt a trace. By then, Ghost Rider will have been launched and this will all be gone.” Eskabar waved again indicating the array of people and machines in front of him. They had one mission. This setup was temporary. All the people in the room thought they had gotten real jobs with a future. Soon they would all be gone too. Permanently gone.

  “Well, since you’ll be ready to go in twenty-four hours and it will take days before they figure it out, can we do a test right now? I have some unfinished business to take care of personally in California. With the time difference, I can be there this morning, do what I have to do, and be in the air over the Pacific before you flip the switch tomorrow. They thought no airplanes in the air for a week in 2001 was a big deal. This may be like their Hindenburg, and planes may never fly again in the US.”

  “Yes. I am very excited too. Thank you for letting me be a part of your historic plan. I think the test is important. If something goes wrong, we will have time to correct it. If it works, we will have high confidence in reaching our bigger goal. But I admit I am a bit nervous. We have been working on this for almost a year.”

  LaSalam’s face turned red and contorted. The Leopard pulled a 9mm Sig Sauer p320 Compact out of his pocket and pushed the barrel under Eskabar’s chin. He whispered in an intense but lowered voice, “Do not show weakness. Do not fail or it will be costly for all of us, particularly for your family—Esha and your two young boys back home. How are they doing?” He smiled a thin threatening smile and shoved the barrel harder against Eskabar’s throat. He could hear gurgling coming from Eskabar’s mouth and the sweet pungent odor of Eskabar’s sweat.

  “Please. Please,” Eskabar managed to cough out. “We will do it. We will not fail. Please not my family.”

  LaSalam lowered the gun and shoved it back into his inner coat pocket. Still smiling he said, “That’s better. I just wanted to make sure you understood the stakes or let’s say ‘importance’ of our mission. As I promised, ‘when,’ not ‘if’ we succeed, you will be rewarded and your family will be safe. Esha will surely have the joy of seeing her grandchildren. Enough said. Let’s see that test now.”

  Eskabar pulled his shoulders forward and tried to compose himself. He had heard of the Leopard’s temper but never seen it, much less been the brunt of it. “I have chosen smaller planes so that we can make sure our system works, but without causing a big uproar that would awaken the giant. We have a six seater twin engine King Air on its way from Providence to Boston and a United 727, with about fifty people on board, on it’s way from New York to Portland Maine.” Eskabar pointed to two airplane icons on the wall screen inching along, not too far from each other. “They are currently at about the same altitude. The accident will look like pilot error by the small plane. That’s plausible and should keep them off our scent.”

  “Ok. That all makes sense. So now how do you make it happen?” LaSalam said.

  Eskabar stepped over to a standing desk near the wall screen. He grabbed a mouse and hovered the cursor, which looked like a red “X” inside a circle, over the King Air. “It took a lot of work to get to this point, but it’s as simple as this…” Eskabar clicked and held the left mouse button over the King Air and dragged it over the 727 and let go. The dotted lines of the two flights’ paths merged somewhere south of Boston. The two airplane icons now inched their way along the dotted lines toward each other. LaSalam stared at the screen. It seemed to take forever, but it was only a couple of minutes. The two airplane icons finally overlapped, there was a small flash on the screen and then they disappeared.

  LaSalam seemed to stare at the screen for a long time. “I don’t understand. You don’t have remote control of the airplane. How did you make that happen?”

  “We automated our system so that when we make our move, air traffic control is blocked out and both pilots are given voice commands to change course. It helps that I picked an area where visibility is currently low due to weather so they never saw it coming. The pilots were flying by instruments and boom.” Eskabar puffed out his chest with pride.

  The Leopard looked doubtful. Could they possibly do this? “I just see dots on a computer screen like a video game. How do you know what actually happened?”

  Now it was Eskabar’s turn to smile. He felt in control now. He walked over to the adjoining wall screen and clicked the remote control in his hand and brought the screen to life. It was CNN just reporting the latest American political nonsense and scandals. How the Congress couldn’t get anything done and were threatening to shut down the government again. “In my country, they would just go out and shoot them. I don’t understand how Americans get anything done by committee.”

  Just then the screen turned red and a graphical “Breaking News” came across the crawl. The reporter came on and said, “This just in…”

  CHAPTER 23

  THE WORLD ACCORDING TO FRANK

  “Did you see the news?” Loretta said that afternoon, uncrossing her long legs and standing up from across the room. She looked stunning in her tight-fitting red pantsuit, but she radiated concern.

  “Yes, we all did,” I said staring at my screen watching CNN live. “It’s time to call in Frank and get his read on this.”

  Julie went over to a separate keyboard and the wall monitor flickered to life. Frank appeared smoking a pipe and wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat. Despite the gravity of the situation, we all just cracked up laughing.

  “What’s the matter? You don’t like my outfit,” Frank quipped. “I thought I would dress appropriately for the occasion. By the way, if you hadn’t noticed, it’s very easy to change appearances digitally. Let me show you. How’s that?” Suddenly, Frank was replaced by Bart Simpson. We all laughed again. I spit my coffee across the desk.

  “Stop, Frank. You’re killing us…oh, sorry. You know what I mean. Please change back to your normal self.” The Frank we knew and loved as we remembered him, reappeared looking like the archetypal college professor.

  “Frank, have you been following the news?” I said, getting down to business.

  “Yes, I have and like you I
am very worried. I think Bart’s theory about their next move is correct, and this latest airplane disaster was some kind of test. If that is true, then they are very close to pulling the big one. Bart, what have you got?”

  “I believe after running all my traps and trace routes, they are running this operation out of New York City. As may be obvious to us by now, they have hacked the ATC. The press and the Feds are calling it an accident, pilot error for now. What do you think we should do?”

  Frank cleared his throat, which seemed kind of funny for a digital person. I guess we really got the virtual simulation right. He began. “I have been working on a scenario to try to stop them, but Bart, I’m going to need you to pinpoint their exact location. Can you do that and if so, how long will it take? We don’t have much time.”

  Bart sat silently studying his screen. “I’m not sure I can. These guys are not only very good at hacking into highly secure systems, they are great at covering their tracks. I just don’t know. I’ve got Killer, Jay and Jazzle working on it too.”

  “Upload what you’ve got so far to me right now. I’ve got a few routines I can run and maybe between us, we can nail this down.” Frank continued. “Sam, I think it’s time we brought the Feds and Defense in on this.”

  I couldn’t believe he was suggesting this. “After all our hard work, we’ll lose control of it. Who knows what risks it will unleash on the world. Remember our discussions about the risk of letting the genie out of the bottle?”

  “I have thought long and hard about it, Sam. Unfortunately, the genie is out of the bottle and she has an evil twin. This really is a matter of national security. If we know about this and fail to report it, it’s treason. Besides, it’s going to require not just digital, but physical action at some point soon. You know, like good guys with guns stopping bad guys with guns.” Frank stopped and waited for me to respond.