Silent Warpath (Sean Quinlan Book 1)

by Dominic Conlon

  ‘But now we know’ said Natasha.

  ‘Now we know how it happened, when the breach happened and where it happened’ said DD. 'But we don’t know who and what.’

  ‘What don’t we know?’

  ‘What they’ve done’ said DD simply. ‘I know they’ve uploaded a virus to the project, but I’ve no idea what it’s done. And I don’t know yet who was ultimately responsible for masterminding the sabotage.’

  For the next half an hour, DD outlined the information he had. He explained how they had come to realise that the Advanced Marine Agency were behind the plan, his own period of detention and his rescue. He went on to talk about how he and Lomax had struck back and how they had come by the tapes. Natasha asked a few questions now and again. At one point when she realised that Sean had been protecting her nearly 24 hours every day, she put up a hand to cover her eyes. DD thought she might be crying, but when she took her hand away a few moments later, he saw only a new glint of determination.

  Natasha got up and walked out of the room. She returned five minutes later with her own laptop. ‘Perhaps you can help me’ she said as she set it down on the table. DD looked on as she showed him the various files that were downloaded to the sub. After a minute she pointed out the file she believed contained the virus.

  DD pulled out a spare memory stick. ‘May I?’ he enquired.

  Natasha hesitated. It went against everything she had been trained to do. A brief thought flashed through her mind. If anyone found out, she could be charged with treason. She wondered briefly what the penalties for treason were. Then she took the stick from DD and plugged it into her laptop. In a few seconds she had copied the file onto the device and she returned it to DD.

  She watched as DD used several programs to examine the file. First he scanned it using an anti-virus program that she was familiar with. ‘Well, no known virus’ muttered DD under his breath.

  ‘I’ve tried this before’ said Natasha.

  ‘No harm in trying again Nat - I always cover the bases first.’

  Next he loaded a debugger. Natasha knew that the program helped developers discover problems in programs they had written. But she had not used one for a long time and was captivated by the speed at which DD operated. The screen filled with rows of numbers and letters, none of which would have made sense to a non-technical person. She knew that DD was interpreting the characters on the screen and deducing the programming code and logic that lay behind the confusing jumble of text. He was looking at the actual binary code that made up the module and tracing some of the letters and numbers with his fingers, as though he could understand what they meant.

  Although fascinated, Natasha was tired and she looked at her watch. ‘Listen DD, I’m bushed. I need some sleep.’ She turned at the door. ‘I want you to know I am very grateful for what you and your friends have done.’

  DD waved, but did not turn around. Natasha walked back quickly and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  That made DD stop and turn round. ‘Goodnight’ he said, touching the spot where she had kissed him.

  Sean glanced at Lomax to see how he was taking the news. As expected Lomax began to pace up and down. Sean went to the window and peered carefully through the net. The street looked clear.

  Lomax stopped pacing for a moment. ‘What do you think about DD’s idea about the sabotage motivation?’

  Sean released the curtain. ‘It’s very elaborate. They could have chosen a dozen other ways to zap the project that would be less risky.’

  Lomax shook his head. ‘DD says if that happened, they could restore all the systems from backup tapes.’

  ‘OK, then I would torch the building as well. Either way I would make sure that they couldn’t use anything to get back into business. Instead DD says they wrote a sophisticated virus specifically for this project. So I think there’s more to this than trying to stop it dead in its tracks.’

  Lomax sat at the table and picked up a pencil. ‘Maybe, but the project has stopped. No one’s working on developing it now. And the sub is lost.’

  Sean sat opposite Lomax. ‘That’s the funny part of the equation. If the sub is lost, meaning they don’t know where it is, then maybe it’s not lost at all.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Maybe the virus was meant to transfer control from SeaTek to them.’

  Lomax looked interested. ‘OK. But who would do that?’

  Sean shrugged. ‘There are a few big contractors in American undersea defence. Perhaps one of them want to spoil the game on this new technology so they can continue to sell their own older technology. You’re guess is as good as mine.’

  Lomax looked keenly at Sean. ‘You might be onto something there. Maybe the virus wasn’t meant to make the sub disappear - maybe it was meant to make the whole project look…’

  ‘Amateurish?’ suggested Sean.

  ‘Not just amateurish, but a dangerous liability. Not only does the software foul-up, but the sub turns on its support ships. One whiff of a problem like that would put the American department of Defence off for a decade. Investors would demand their money back. The Government wouldn’t touch it with a barge-pole.’

  ‘Perhaps’, muttered Sean. ‘But maybe there’s another agenda.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Lomax. ‘What we know fits with a competitor knobbling the opposition. They’ve made the whole project look like a Frankenstein’s monster. What more could they possibly want?’

  Sean propped his chin in his hand. ‘There’s a lot of money, effort, and leading edge technology gone into this project. When you look at it from America’s point of view, this combination of resources could not be found anywhere else in the world, possibly with the exception of Japan. Suppose the competitor has sold the technology to another country?’

  ‘I don’t know’ said Lomax doubtfully.

  Sean shook his head. ‘I don’t know either, but I’ve a bad feeling about this.’

  Lomax raised his eyebrows. Sean wasn’t such a knuckle-head as he appeared. ‘Well we have to start somewhere and I suggest we wait until DD has run his tests on the tapes.’

  Sean agreed.

  ‘In the meantime, I’m going to grab some shut-eye. Wake me as soon as DD has something.’

  Natasha awoke to someone drumming on her arm. In the dark she couldn’t see who it was and for a moment she felt disorientated.

  ‘Nat, wake up!’ It was DD, tapping her insistently.

  She brushed his hand away. ‘What’s the problem?’ she asked hoarsely.

  ‘Come on, get up. I’ve something to show you.’

  She could tell from his voice he really had found something and she was eager to discover what that was. ‘OK, give me a few moments to dress and I’ll be through in a minute.’ She glanced at the clock and saw it was just after 5 am in the morning. She groaned and made for the bathroom. Before she went into DD’s room she made two cups of coffee and took them through.

  ‘OK, what have you got?’ she asked, handing DD one of the mugs of coffee.

  DD grinned. ‘Just about everything. Come and look at this.’ DD indicated a document on his screen. In it were notes he made during the night. Even to Natasha’s experienced eye it appeared to be list of technical mumbo jumbo. She turned back to DD.

  ‘Tell me’ she said simply.

  DD indicated the chair next to his. ‘First I compared the original unchanged module to the one you gave me last night. I was able to work out where the original had been changed. This was fairly easy, as most of the changes were towards the end of the file. At that stage, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at - the file was still in binary and I had no way of deciphering what the code meant, let alone the changes that had been made.’

  DD ruffled through a desk pad to find a page. ‘Once I discovered where all the changes were, I started to look at other modules, just to get a feel for what instructions related to modules - you know the kind of thing, where there were patterns, or where the same block of code was repeated
in the same place in other modules.’ DD went back to the screen and checked his notes. ‘I used some special debuggers that make a best guess at the code that they are given. Nothing seemed to work for the first hour. Then I started to get some commands I recognised as assembler hex codes - you know, low level code that has been compiled so the machine can understand the instructions. I started to put the commands together and after about half an hour it began to resemble a computer program.’

  Natasha was beginning to find DD’s narrative interesting. This was a genius at work while she was asleep. ‘Go on’, she encouraged.

  ‘It took me about three hours to trace the original untouched code from the tapes and match it to the binary. I now know what the original package instructed the sub to do. It was supposed to run a series of test drills for the sub over a period of a fortnight. It was also supposed to surface each week to report back. I even have the protocol for the exchange of data, the list of data it was supposed to radio back, and the order in which it was supposed to report.’ DD looked at Natasha who indicated her agreement.

  ‘My team helped prepare that checklist and designed the reporting mechanism.’

  ‘Right. Then I started to look at the additional code - the virus that had been engineered for the sub.’

  ‘OK’ she said, impatient for DD to get to the crux.

  ‘Well, this is where it gets really interesting.’ DD scrolled down the page on the document. ‘According to my notes, the first instructions were to enable some kind of weapons system. I don’t know much about that – can you fill me in?’

  Natasha’s mouth went dry. So that was how it had happened.

  ‘It looks like the new package gave the sub a timetable, a target and an area to search for the target.’

  ‘What’s the target?’ asked Natasha quickly.

  DD shook his head. ‘It doesn’t have a name in the code, just a specification.’

  ‘Well what have you got?’

  DD handed her a thin pile of paper. ‘It’s all on there, tonnage, length, beam, acoustic profile, magnetic resonance signature, the lot. All the physical characteristics - everything except the name.’

  ‘To the computers on board Cetus, the name of the ship wouldn’t help it find the target’ Natasha observed. ‘But with the information we have now we should be able to identify the ship. What about the timetable – when is it supposed to strike?’

  ‘That’s the problem, Natasha. According to this code it should reach its target less than 48 hours from now.’

  Chapter 27

  Sean could hear the sound of raised voices as he approached the door. It sounded like Lomax and DD were arguing. He could sense the frosty air as he entered the room. ‘What’s up?’

  Neither Lomax nor DD replied. Sean looked at DD. ‘Have you found out anything else about the target?’

  ‘No - not yet. Nat and I are going to research it as soon as I finish looking at the tapes.’

  ‘Any other news?’ Sean continued.

  ‘Yep - I’ve broken through’ replied DD.

  ‘I’m all ears DD.’

  ‘Well, I’ve set up a rule on their email system to copy any email they send to my private mail account.’

  ‘Are they likely to discover what you’ve done?’

  ‘No’ said DD. ‘I’ve used server side rules to blind copy every outgoing email in the account. So even if they get replies it won’t be obvious that a copy has been sent.’

  ‘OK, anything else?’ asked Sean.

  ‘I’ve dropped some keystroke loggers onto a number of their PCs.’ DD noticed Sean’s puzzled look and continued. ‘Keystroke loggers do exactly what they say - they log every keystroke and mouse movement into a file. Then every so often they send the file off to my email account without the user’s knowledge. It’s very difficult to detect.’

  ‘OK - any problems?’

  ‘I discovered that the firewall is open only at set times of the day and all traffic through it is monitored. I had to adjust the key logger to pretend that all the information it’s sending out looks like part of the normal flow of traffic. And I had to make sure it never sends out information when the firewall is closed - it would be discovered straight away, otherwise.’

  ‘Great. Anything else?’

  DD shook his head. ‘I didn’t get time for anything else - I was rushing to get all that done before the gate came down.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that will have to do for now’ said Lomax.

  ‘Don’t be so negative’ Sean replied. ‘DD’s worked wonders, now all we have to do is log on to collect the information.’

  Sean looked at DD. 'That's right, isn't it?'

  DD agreed, avoiding Lomax’s gaze.

  ‘Look here’ said DD, pointing to the map. The coordinates I have from the file is this box in the Barents Sea. At the top and to the east we have the Svalbard islands, owned by Norway.’ Natasha watched as DD’s finger moved across the map. ‘Over to the West, the area is bounded by Franz Josef Land, which is Russian.’ DD’s finger moved downward. ‘And to the south we have Novaya Zemlya – Russian again.’

  For the last two hours Natasha and DD had gone through an on-line catalogues of world ships, plugging in details of tonnage, beam and length. Natasha flipped through the list. ‘Look DD, we’ve found cargo ships, bulkers, small container ships and tankers. They’re all commercial ships - none of them are military.’

  DD thought for a moment. ‘It may be too obvious, but the chances are the ship is Russian.’

  Natasha agreed. ‘But none of the ships we’ve found are due to cross that area of the Barents.’

  ‘It can’t be any of them, then’ said DD despondently.

  ‘You know, if I wanted to make a point by sinking a commercial ship, I wouldn’t choose any of them either.’

  ‘Why not?’ DD asked.

  ‘Because they’re all too small. If I sank an oil tanker it would create an environmental disaster, but the tonnage is too small.’

  There was a minute’s silence before Natasha spoke again. ‘Listen Dee, suppose for a minute it isn’t a ship we’re looking for.’

  No-one had called him anything but “DD” before. The fact that Natasha had bestowed her own nickname gave him a big kick. Even so, what Natasha said was puzzling. ‘If it’s not a ship, then what is it?’

  ‘Could it be a sub?’ asked Natasha hesitantly.

  DD shook his head emphatically. ‘Too big. I don’t know of any submarine that big, unless it’s Chinese or something.’

  Natasha smiled at DD. ‘Humour me – let’s just suppose there is a submarine that big. You said it might be Chinese. We should be able to check that out quickly, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘OK’ said DD, ‘but I think you’re going to be disappointed.’

  Within five minutes DD found the answer. ‘There’s a series of Russian nuclear powered attack submarines which they call the Akula class’ said DD excitedly. ‘Length is 175 metres, beam is spot on at twenty metres and displacement when surfaced is also within the limits.’

  DD looked at Natasha and beamed. ‘Bingo!’

  Natasha hugged DD. ‘Dee, you’re a genius!’

  DD had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘It was your idea, remember? We’ll need to let Lomax and Sean know what we’ve found out.’

  Natasha looked pensive. ‘OK, here’s another question. How did they know this submarine is going to be in the area the day after tomorrow?’

  ‘Maybe they’ve got access to Russian intelligence.’

  ‘They must have’ agreed Natasha. ‘But let’s suppose that Cetus got held up and couldn’t make it on time.’

  ‘I see what you’re getting at!’ exclaimed DD. ‘Which means... ?’

  ‘Which means the Akula is based in that area for a while.’

  ‘Right again!’ said DD. ‘I’ve heard that some subs are given an area to patrol – I think it’s called a bastion. They stay there for several months, or until they’re told to go somewhere else. They
just sort of stooge around, in case they’re required to release a missile or two.’

  ‘It all seems to fit’ agreed Natasha.

  ‘Cetus is programmed to attack as soon as it makes contact with the Akula. Just how good are its weapon systems?’

  ‘Dee, I’m not able to talk about it.’

  ‘Oh’. DD couldn’t hide his disappointment.

  Natasha’s head moved from side to side slowly. ‘No, you really don’t understand. Nothing in the code you’ve seen could tell you just how destructive it is.’

  DD looked at Natasha anxiously. ‘What, you mean like an atomic bomb? Is it some kind of atomic weapon?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’ Natasha’s voice was almost a whisper. ‘I don’t know that much myself, only what the engineers had to tell me so I could interface my software with it.’

  ‘…And that was?’

  For a whole minute, Natasha reviewed what she felt she could say. The ever present feeling in the pit of her stomach was like a conscience, warning her to say nothing. But if she was going to find Cetus, she would have to share what she knew. She drew a deep breath.

  ‘It’s not an atomic weapon. It can only be used underwater because it relies on generating sound waves that can be focused over long distances.’

  DD waited, but Natasha was not forthcoming. ‘OK, so it relies on sound waves. What could be so destructive about that?’

  ‘Oh Dee, you just don’t know - I don’t know all the details myself and I was working on the project!’