“Well, maybe that’s why I didn’t ask for your opinion. Anyway, the paperwork’s all signed.”
“More’s the pity.” She picked up her menu and then almost immediately put it down again.
“Have you decided where you’re going to stay when they kick you out?”
“Not for sure. I’ve still got the camper, so I can live in that.”
“What—in the middle of that storage lot outside the Beltway?”
“No, I don’t think I could get away with that. I thought I’d hit the road for a while. Get out of town and do a little touring.”
“I thought you told me you have a new project you’re working on?”
“Yes, but it’s the usual deal. I can work wherever I can get an Internet connection, and with my satellite dish, that means anywhere.”
“What’s the project about?”
“No can tell.”
“Really? I’ve been pretty helpful in the past, haven’t I?”
“You sure have. But I really can’t talk about this one.”
“Well, you just be that way then. But you can’t change the subject that easily. I think you should come stay with me while they rehabilitate your dump.”
Frank made a noncommittal grunt and picked up his menu.
Marla sniffed and followed suit. “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I didn’t mean to give you such a hard time. Let me hit the restart button, okay?”
“Okay, so what’s new?”
“Nothing, really. I’ve started interviewing for a job after graduation. I guess that’s new.”
“Really? Are you interviewing for any in Washington?”
“Yes. But hey—before I forget—how’s Simone?”
“Ah, okay I guess. She’s in France, you know. She got her old position back at the university.”
“I know. I was sorry—for you, I mean. Are you going to go visit her?”
Frank picked up the menu again. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
“Why not? It seemed like the two of you were really enjoying each other’s company.”
“Well, I’m not very good with long-distance relationships.”
“Go on! You sound like a college freshman!”
“Well, whatever. I’ve never liked long telephone conversations. Or actually, telephone conversations, period. Can we change the subject?”
“Okay, all right. Let me guess—you’re going to order the chicken marsala, right?”
“Naturally. And you’re getting the ravioli, of course.”
“Of course. Oh good! Here comes the fresh-baked bread.”
Later in the meal, when Frank returned from the rest room, he found Marla sitting with her hands folded in her lap and a smile on her face that was half-goofy and half-strained.
“What?” he asked, sitting.
“What do you mean, ‘What?’”
“What’s with the funny look on your face?”
“I don’t know what you mean. But there is something I want to talk to you about.”
“Uh-oh. Now what?”
“Not uh-oh. This is something good. There’s somebody I want you to meet.”
“Hmm. Am I right in assuming it’s someone of the male persuasion?”
“Well, duh. Yes. And I think he’s pretty special.”
“You mean this one might be a keeper?”
“Yes, Dad. I really do. And I want you to meet him.”
Frank drummed his fingers on his thigh. He always knew this day might come—even hoped it would, for Marla’s sake. But she had taken him by surprise. And he was all too aware that not all stories that began like this had happy endings.
“And does this special someone have a name?”
“Of course, he does.”
“And that would be?”
“His name is Tim Slattery. Oh, Dad, I hope so much that you’ll like him. And don’t worry—he works for some sort of fancy data analysis firm, so you and he should have a lot to talk about.”
* * *
Frank stared blankly at the stack of papers he’d extracted from the last drawer of his desk and then dropped them into a garbage bag that already held most of the rest of the desk’s contents. Later it would occur to him that he had likely disposed of all of his back tax returns.
So Marla was evidently hoping to make Tim Slattery his son-in-law. He had no clue whether that would be a good or a bad thing for Marla in the long run, but it sure as hell would be awkward for him in the near term. Of course, Slattery couldn’t tell Marla whom he really worked for or that he and her father were working together on a project, which was the way it would have to stay. And obviously, Tim hadn’t figured out whether and how to tell Frank that he was dating his daughter, either. At least that explained why the kid was always trying so hard to please.
And then there was the critical infrastructure report. Frank was still beating himself up for missing things that Slattery hadn’t. Beyond that, there was the disturbing information he’d read in the materials themselves.
The concept of critical infrastructure was hardly a new one, as the report’s authors had noted in a long introduction. Indeed, the practice of destroying an enemy’s crops and draft animals was as old as war itself. The types of infrastructure and means of destruction had simply become more numerous and sophisticated over time. During the Second World War, Hitler’s U-boats had attempted to starve Great Britain into surrender and almost succeeded. The Allies, in turn, sought to knock out not only Germany’s munitions works but also its bridges so that trains couldn’t deliver troops or supplies to the front lines. Indeed, all other things being equal, so long as your critical infrastructure stayed more intact than your enemy’s, you were more likely to win.
Then, for a few decades, intercontinental ballistic missiles topped with nuclear weapons made the concept of critical infrastructure seem quaint. Unless you stopped almost all the incoming missiles, everything, critical or otherwise, would be vaporized wherever they struck. Everywhere else, the radiation would be so extreme and society so disrupted that everything would break down. Anyone who survived the initial strike might well envy those who hadn’t during the few days or weeks before the “survivors” succumbed as well.
With the Cold War over and terrorism on the rise, though, concerns over critical infrastructure were very much back in vogue. There were more bad guys to worry about than ever, with new groups of terrorists emerging on almost a monthly basis all over the world. The attacks on 9/11 had brought the reality of terrorism to the homeland, making it clear that sophisticated, well-funded organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS could make terrorism a fact of life wherever they chose to strike. And strike they had, in multiple countries around the globe. Now, with the rise of Foobar and the Caliphate, the attacks threatened to increase in frequency, geographic range, and destructiveness.
What particularly disturbed him was the fact that all types of critical infrastructure were becoming completely dependent on the Internet at the same time that terrorist attacks were proliferating. Now that transportation, banking, government, the delivery of food and fuel, and every other essential service were controlled by Internet-linked computer systems, everything would go down if the Internet did.
Frank had always been shocked that so little effort had been spent engineering robust defenses against cyberattack into critical systems in the U.S., given how much more appealing a target the Internet was in the developed world than its physical infrastructure. In traditional weapons-based—so-called kinetic—warfare, the United States could direct overwhelming force against an enemy either to prevent or respond to an attack. And even if that wasn’t the case, America’s geographical isolation and naval supremacy made it largely invulnerable to anything other than a missile attack.
But the tables turned dra
matically when the targets were computers connected by the Internet. Foobar had a classic asymmetric warfare advantage in this kind of conflict: his followers barely used sophisticated computers or telecommunications for anything, while the U.S. and the rest of the Western world used them to manage everything. Indeed, a terrorist like Foobar could, if he wished, attack anonymously—as had Osama bin Laden—perhaps with the result that the U.S. would never know for sure who had launched the attack that brought it to its knees.
But still. If that was really what Foobar was up to, why wasn’t there any evidence?
* * *
6
Tiger Team, Tiger Team, Burning Bright
Frank eyed the other members of the Cyberattack Tiger Team as they entered the conference room at Fort Meade. Everyone was now seated around the table, except for Derek R. Henderson, the team’s chair. He was an Army colonel attached to United States Cyber Command, usually referred to simply as USCYBERCOM, a military command overseen by the National Security Agency and charged with centralizing and coordinating all defensive and offensive military cyberspace resources and operations.
Frank had already read the bios of all the other team members in the briefing book and decided he was the least qualified and consequential person in the room. Worse, he expected the rest of the team would surely have reached the same conclusion. Certainly, Virgil Cooper, the National Center for Counter Terrorism operations officer seated near the head of the table, must be thinking that. According to the briefing book, prior to joining the NCCT, Cooper had been a Navy officer commanding one of the Navy’s elite SEAL units. If Foobar’s attack could be intercepted at sea, he would lead the operation. If not, he’d be able to put appropriate land-based forces in the picture as quickly as possible. Cooper looked every inch the buzz-cut, square-jawed part, as did the serious-looking Navy lieutenant sitting at his elbow. Frank imagined the crow’s feet at the corners of Cooper’s eyes were the legacy of years of squinting through binoculars in all manner of tense, covert situations.
Opposite Cooper sat Hermann Koontz, resembling the commander’s anti-matter complement. Next to Koontz was one of his Whiz Kids, who was, of course, deeply immersed in his iPhone. Koontz was lost in thought, as oblivious to Cooper’s careful grooming and crisp uniform as Frank imagined the commander was offended by the old engineer’s rumpled clothes, dumpy physique, and unkempt hair.
Next to Koontz’s assistant sat a tall man in his early sixties who had given Frank a self-conscious smile and nod of the head when he arrived. He had placed his briefing binder and a daybook with lined pages on the table when he sat down. He had aligned them neatly in front of him with a mechanical pencil placed parallel to and equidistant between the two. He had used that pencil to write the day’s date at the top (centered) of the left-hand page of the open daybook before closing it again, waiting for the meeting to begin. Frank concluded he must be Bill Fermi, the computer scientist from NIST, and guessed that a slide rule could still be found somewhere in the back of his desk, a relic of his engineering past too sacred to discard despite being consigned decades ago to the dustbin of computational history.
The last senior Tiger Team member seated at the table was a man in his forties, engaged in conversation with a woman perhaps a decade his junior. That would be Barry Shuttleworth, the Department of Homeland Security Response Manager, and his aide. According to the briefing book, his role would be to coordinate an appropriate relief response if the Tiger Teams failed to thwart an attack before it was launched. Shuttleworth’s demeanor was distracted and his appearance bureaucratic. Frank wondered whether Beltway apparatchiks went to sleep with their ties still knotted neatly around their necks.
Frank glanced at his watch. He wished he’d brought Slattery along to help him look more important than he was feeling.
Ten minutes after the hour, the door opened to admit the chair of the Tiger Team and his entourage.
“Sorry to be late, everyone. Damn traffic was worse than usual.” He took his seat at the head of the table, flanked by a military officer on one side and a civilian on the other.
“Let me start by welcoming you all to the Cyberattack Tiger Team. I can’t stress too greatly the importance of the work we’ll be performing here. I’ll need one hundred and ten percent effort from everyone around this table, and I assure you that you’ll get the same from me and my staff. If there’s any reason why any of you can’t make that kind of commitment, now’s the time to speak up.”
He swept his gaze around the table, making brief eye contact with each of them. “Good. I see that you’ve all got your briefing books with you and trust you’ve already studied them thoroughly. Let’s go around the table once so we can put names to faces. Mr. Fermi, please introduce yourself.”
“Sure. Bill Fermi. I’m with NIST, where I’ve spent most of my career. For the last fifteen years, I’ve focused on cybersecurity. My particular specialty is designing resiliency into Internet and Web infrastructure.” He turned to Koontz’s Whiz Kid, who reluctantly set his iPhone aside.
“Hi. I’m Gene Ensign. I’m one of Hermann’s data analysts.” He began to reach for his iPhone again before abruptly withdrawing his hand. Frank was reasonably sure Koontz had kicked him under the table.
“Hermann Koontz, CIA, senior director, Big Data analysis. I’ve been with the Agency since 1975.”
The chairman turned to the staffer to his right. “Lieutenant?”
“Good to meet you all. I’m Barbara Travers, lieutenant, U.S. Army. My job is to analyze and integrate data regarding domestic attacks and threats and feed it up the chain. I pull information from the Department of Homeland Security and over one hundred other government sources and flag the data we really need to pay attention to. I’ll serve as our principal liaison with the Bioattack and Kinetic Tiger Teams.” She turned to her boss.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. I’m Colonel Derek Henderson, U.S. Army. I took my current position at USCYBERCOM two years ago after a stint with the NATO brass in Casteau, Belgium. Before that, I did five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t know as much about cybersecurity as I hope each of you do, but I do know how to make things happen. I’ve been charged by the secretary of defense with making sure this team hits the ground running, and that’s what we’re going to do.” He turned to the young man to his left.
“Pleased to meet you all. My name’s Graham Lutz, on loan to USCYBERCOM from the State Department. I’m a Middle East specialist and will act as a subject matter resource for the team. When things are happening in the field you should know about, I’ll provide updates. If any of you at any time has questions about the political, cultural, or religious context of what you’re dealing with, don’t hesitate to contact me, and I’ll try and help you out. I’ll also be the liaison to the Nuclear Tiger Team.”
The commander was next. “Virgil Cooper, operations officer, National Counter Terrorism Center, formerly Navy commander, U.S. Navy, Sea, Air, and Land Special Operations Force—better known as SEALS—supporting the Agency for the duration of this project.” His aide followed.
“Stan Barnett, lieutenant, U.S. Navy, supporting Mr. Cooper.”
Shuttleworth nodded to those around the table. “Barry Shuttleworth, deputy assistant undersecretary for Response Management, Department of Homeland Security. Lynn?”
“Hi, I’m Lynn Walters, a DHS external liaison manager. I’m looking forward to working with each of you.”
That left only Frank, who had given up on coming up with a way to describe himself in a way that was both honest as well as more inspiring than “unemployed cybersecurity geek.”
“Frank Adversego. Ah, I guess you could say I’ve been heavily involved in cybersecurity for the last few years. I’ve worked with the Agency in the past, and they brought me into this project.”
Henderson nodded and picked up the projector remote. “Thank you, everyone. Now let�
�s take a look at the agenda for the rest of our day.”
The first slide in what Frank feared would be a chloroformic series of the same appeared on the screen. It featured the usual self-explanatory topic list, which would inevitably be expanded into a five-minute explanation of the obvious. It read:
The big picture
International
Domestic
What we know
What we don’t know
Next steps
To Frank’s relief, after a short pause, Henderson slid the remote across the table to Lutz, the Middle East expert.
“I expect there’s quite a range of knowledge in the room, so let me apologize in advance for boring anyone who’s already an expert on the Caliphate. As we all get up to speed, I’ll be able to shorten things up in future meetings.”
He switched to a slide showing a map of the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.
“Here’s what things looked like a year ago. The areas marked in red were under Foobar’s control; those in pink were contested territory, with coalition forces and Foobar’s troops gaining and losing ground, sometimes on a weekly or even a daily basis. As you can see, Foobar controlled minor parts of Syria and Iraq, but that was it. And not big blocks, either—more like a patchwork of disconnected villages.
“Here’s how things look today.” He clicked to the next slide, which showed the same map now drenched in red. “Foobar’s made dramatic gains despite the fact that more countries have joined the anti-Caliphate coalition. The Caliphate now controls most of Syria, where the government holds almost nothing outside of Damascus. If Foobar continues his sweep from Aleppo down into Lebanon, it won’t take long before Damascus will have to surrender, too.
“Foobar’s also consolidated his hold on almost all of Iraq and is massing his troops on the Syrian border with Jordan. The big surprise last week was the revelation that the Kurds had caved and signed a non-aggression pact with the Caliphate. As you know, the Kurds hate the Turks. We suspect Foobar’s agreed to give them all the traditional Kurdish territory in Turkey as well as Iraq in exchange for their standing aside if he decides to take Turkey on. That means he could cross through Kurdish-controlled territory to attack Turkey without having to worry about getting cut off by the Kurds from behind. Yesterday, Turkey put the rest of the NATO countries on notice that if Foobar crosses the border, it will invoke Article V of the Treaty of the North Atlantic. That’s the provision that allows one treaty member to require the others to regard an attack on one nation as an attack against the entire alliance and join in the defense of the notifying member. Any questions?”
The Doodlebug War Page 6
