Ghost Fleet

by P. W. Singer, August Cole

  “We’re here,” he said, pointing to the first security checkpoint outside the Directorate headquarters complex. “You sure you want to do this?”

  Carrie nodded and climbed into the back seat. She pulled out a pair of metal handcuffs.

  “Cuff me,” she said. “Gently.”

  Ehukai Beach, Oahu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

  “Peaches, I think you better introduce yourself to Major Doyle,” Duncan said, still holding the knife to Conan’s throat. Conan kept the rifle pointed at the forehead of the man in the dirt.

  “Major, I am introduced to be Lieutenant Pietor Nowak of Jednostka Wojskowa Formoza.” He reached up a hand to shake, but Conan kept the rifle trained on him.

  “Polish navy special operations. He’s our ride,” Duncan said, slowly pulling the knife away from her throat.

  “I must compliment you on your tradecraft, Major,” the figure in the dirt said. “Now could you remove, please, the gun?”

  “I’m not buying this shit,” Conan said, keeping the gun on him. “Why the mind games? There’s no one left in the NSM. Just kill me and get it over with. But he’s going to die with me.” She jabbed the figure with the tip of the barrel.

  Duncan walked over and knelt beside the figure on the ground, sheathing his knife and putting himself in Conan’s line of fire.

  “No mind games, Major; a lot has changed. The Directorate cracked how to track our nuke subs. So we had to find a new sub. Or, rather, a shitty old rust bucket that runs on diesel.”

  “You should not make the fun of the Orzel,” said the man in the dirt. “She is wonderful ship; she got us here, did she not?”

  Duncan turned to him.

  “Wonderful? I know you had it hard here, Major,” he said, looking back at Conan, “but try spending two months on an old Kilo-class sub transiting from the Baltic to the Pacific. God, the smells. Not the diesel, mind you; the fumes from the crew eating only borscht, pierogi, and smoked cheese. Worst cruise of my life. Going to have words with the travel agent when I get back to Dam Neck.”

  “I thought NATO imploded and wouldn’t give us help. That’s what the Directorate propaganda said,” said Conan.

  “It did. The Poles, though, didn’t like how things were playing out and came to a private agreement to loan us the services of their shitty little ship and stick it to the Russians along the way.”

  “And what did the Poles get in exchange?” Conan asked, her body starting to ease, the rifle lowering.

  “A very good deal,” Nowak said.

  “Major, you’re looking at an officer in the world’s newest nuclear power. That’s what they got. A crappy old diesel-powered Kilo-class submarine that’s untrackable from space and shows up on sonar as Russian. And Peaches, of course. All that in exchange for ten B-eighty-three one-point-two-megaton nuclear bombs. The Nuclear Lend-Lease is what the planners call it.”

  The Polish officer smiled. “We live in very dangerous neighborhood. But now our neighbors will think twice about looking our way again in future.”

  “And what was that you said when you went down?” Conan asked.

  “You surprise me, and so I curse in Polish — not at you, but myself. Duncan would say it translate as ‘WTF.’ ”

  Conan lowered the rifle completely and reached out her hand to help the Pole to his feet.

  “How do you say ‘thank you’ in Polish?” she asked.

  “Dziękuję.”

  “That, then.”

  Directorate Command, Honolulu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

  During most of his drive with the Black Widow, he had still been partly drunk. Now, as Colonel Vladimir Markov stared down at the nineteen-year-old Chinese corporal questioning him, he realized he was finally sober. I should be, he thought, it’s the third checkpoint I’ve had to get her through.

  “You know who this is?” said Markov to the corporal. “Quite a prize.”

  He hadn’t been certain they’d make it past even the first checkpoint. But she’d gone through the body scanner and been searched by the two marines for weapons, and then they’d been waved on. At the second checkpoint, he’d been more worried about himself, unsure whether his ID badge would still work and wondering if the guards would just shoot him on the spot if it didn’t. But as they waited, a call came in from General Yu’s aide-de-camp, a major who had been alerted to Markov’s presence by the base’s automated security system, and eventually they were buzzed through. But first the major had the guards scan them again, to ensure that they carried no weapons.

  At the third checkpoint, Markov stood next to his prisoner and yanked on her handcuffs, trying to eke out a sign of submission from her. On cue, she whimpered and lowered her eyes. The corporal looked closer, attempting to reconcile the stories he’d heard about the woman who’d killed so many with the timid figure before him.

  “She’s for the general,” said Colonel Markov. “Kids like you just get to watch.” His eyes started to sting and his bladder throbbed as his dehydrated body began to come to grips with his looming hangover.

  The corporal’s face reddened beneath his high-crowned riot helmet and he pursed his lips. In his left hand, he held his radio close to his mouth, as if he were pausing before taking a bite. His right palm rested on the pistol in his thigh holster. He had the tense posture of somebody who was totally alone in a moment of crisis.

  “You need to wait,” said the corporal. “I have to do another security scan.”

  “Fine. And while we wait I will call the general and tell him why you’re delaying his special delivery,” said Markov. “I am going to get a medal for what I’ve done. For what you’re doing, you’ll be lucky not to get shot.”

  The hand on the corporal’s gun flashed up to his neck, where he scratched a patch of flesh just behind the jawbone, an inch in front of the stim-plant node that was scabbing over. The brief scratch seemed to soothe his anxiety, and he nodded up at the black sphere on a pole behind him.

  “No, Colonel, they know it’s you. That’s why they’re watching us now. For all I know, the general’s watching too,” said the corporal.

  “Hope so,” said Shin under her breath. “I want him ready.”

  “Shut up!” shouted Markov. “Or I’ll tape you up.” She bowed her head and shuffled forward through the scanning booth. After another search, the guard motioned them on.

  “That was the last checkpoint,” Markov said. “Be on your best behavior.”

  “As long as I can,” she said.

  Shanghai Jiao Tong University

  Hu’s commanding officer wouldn’t say why the orders had changed, so she’d hacked his access point to the command network. The Americans were apparently on the move and, more important, had acted in a way that had taken Hainan by surprise.

  So now America would be put back in the box with a devastating strike designed to teach its public a lesson once and for all. The target list was displayed in the system library. Hu entered the 3-D representation of the university’s library, where the target files were laid out on what appeared to be wooden bookshelves, and ran a search of current temperatures, marking any below freezing. There, glowing in blue on a wooden bookshelf to her right: a power company in Akron, Ohio. That would be her starting point.

  It was too easy, not worthy of her skills. The backdoor into the target had been created before she had joined the unit. Now it was just a simple matter of inserting new programming. Modeled after the Americans’ Project Aurora malware, which had first been tested in 2007, the attack program would use the power companies’ own generators as weapons. The malicious software would cause them to rapidly connect and disconnect to the electrical grid, all of them out of phase. This would wreck not just the generators, leading to the collapse of the electric grid, but also the synchronous induction motors, which ran the machinery
everywhere from factories to oil-pipeline facilities.

  Her fingers flicked in tiny motions, the smart-rings on each sending commands to initiate the attack protocols while also bringing up her personal photo album. She cued it to scan and add any images geo-tagged in the Akron area. She wanted to capture the Americans’ last enjoyment of warmth.

  But then the photo album turned white. Just as Hu was starting to flick her fingers to reset the system, the white cover of the album began to shrink, pulling in to show black edges. The fingers on her right hand continued with the attack protocol while she watched, fascinated, as an image started to form in the album. It began as a blank mask of white against black but then slowly filled out to show arching eyebrows, a wide mustache upturned at both ends, and a thin, pointed beard. The face had an oversize smile that somehow appeared horribly cruel.

  Hu’s armpits flooded with sweat, and her stomach tightened. She blinked to make sure it was real and not a hallucination. It had to be a prank. She’d learned about them in the training courses, but they had been offline for over a decade.

  She lifted up her visor and cast a glance to the auditorium floor below to see if her commanding officer saw what she was seeing. No; he was engrossed in the slow unwrapping of a stick of gum. The others seated around him were equally oblivious, a symphony of helmets and fingers bobbing up and down and back and forth as they proceeded with the attack-prep command.

  Hu pulled her visor down, projecting herself back into the virtual world. Her fingers began to dance again, each ring in action, a force command overriding the album’s operating system and terminating the program while simultaneously starting a full-system verification.

  Hu violently punched and pulled the space in front of her as the multiple commands spun out. She felt angry but exhilarated, her stim pump kicking in when the new commands initiated. A wash of euphoria came over her, stronger than she’d ever felt before.

  As the album closed at her command, another white-masked avatar appeared, this time hovering over the Akron file she had pulled from the target library. Hu’s fingers danced, another wash of euphoria coming with each command movement.

  Just as her counterattack made this new mask disappear, the technical specifics of the Akron target re-emerged. Then the mask morphed and divided into two identical masks. Fingers dancing in midair, she attacked again. As the masks split into four, Hu felt another pump of stim kicking in; such intense happiness. Ah, that was it. Each action just created more masks, her mind realized. She knew she should stop, but the smiling mask was taunting her. Whoever was behind it needed to be taught a lesson, plus, her body craved just one more wash of the stim that came from each command.

  Soon there were thousands of the white masks washing out the once-beautiful digital landscape. It was as if the entire virtual world had risen up in revolt. But Hu had never felt so wonderful.

  The commanding officer below was just starting to chew his gum when he noticed that the helmets above him in the amphitheater rows were not swaying in their usual patterns. Some were tilted in evident confusion; others rocked back and forth violently. He panned the room and saw one helmet tipped to the side, its wearer’s head lolling.

  Hu’s body slumped off the chair, and her helmet bounced on the wood floor; the officer didn’t know whether to run to her or the system control station. Before he could decide, the auditorium’s projector lit up the center of the room. A massive white blaze of light crystalized into a holograph, the pinpricks of light forming a smiling black-and-white mask.

  A digitized voice boomed across the room’s speakers and into each of the linked helmets:

  “We are Anonymous.

  We are Legion.

  We do not forgive.

  We do not forget . . .

  And we are back!”

  Then the room went dark.

  Directorate Command, Honolulu, Hawaii Special Administrative Zone

  So the Russian had really done it. General Yu’s aide-de-camp had seen them on the security camera, and her identity had been confirmed, but he hadn’t been truly sure until he saw them up close.

  The thought knotted the major’s stomach as he led the two of them into the general’s office. He watched, his hand on his pistol, as the Russian pulled out a key and handcuffed her to one of the wooden office chairs in front of the general’s desk. It made the major doubt again whether it really was her, whether the tests had placed the right person at the scene of those horrors, because she curled up tightly in the seat, knees pulled up to her chest, her posture that of a girl who was truly broken. The Russian ripped her wig off with a flourish, revealing her bald head, and tossed the fake hair onto her knees. She just studied the floor in submission.

  This made the aide worry. When radioed the news of the Russian’s unexpected arrival with the girl, General Yu had ordered them brought to his office. But now the aide was uncertain how the general would react to her in person. She didn’t look the way he or, he guessed, the general would imagine.

  “Can you get us some water?” asked the Russian. The woman kept herself curled up in a fetal position in her chair. She seemed scared out of her wits, literally.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel, but that is not possible. General Yu will be here any minute; there’s no time.”

  “Damn it, she’s about to pass out from dehydration. We need to get some water and stims into her.”

  The aide thought it over, eyeing Markov, who looked like he might be a bit drunk, or at least battling a hangover, as he leaned against the wall. The aide was still mulling it over when he heard loud footsteps in the corridor and turned, ready to greet General Yu. He could hear the general bellowing at a young communications lieutenant to recheck the connections to Hainan; they had been problematic all day. The general blamed his underlings’ incompetence, but the aide assumed it was insurgent sabotage yet again. He also guessed the general wanted the young officer’s eyes and ears to be somewhere other than at this meeting.

  When the general entered, the Russian spoke first; a mistake. “I’ve done it,” Markov said with a note of weary triumph.

  Yu nearly exploded, just as the aide had feared he would. “You’ve done it?” he said. “How many of my men died because you failed to catch her sooner? And now you want credit for her capture. You think we will give you a medal, that it will somehow save you?”

  The general started to laugh. “Let me take a look at this killer you have brought in, and then we can discuss exactly what you deserve.”

  He dropped to one knee in front of the girl, who kept her gaze on the ground.

  “Look at me, girl,” ordered Yu as he leaned in closer. The girl moved slightly in her seat and then her head rose. The sight of her made the aide lose his breath. Her expression shifted instantly from meek to primal, her pupils almost eclipsing the irises of her eyes. She stared directly at General Yu, who studied her quizzically, their faces inches apart.

  Then the mass of black hair on her knees stirred, and the wig flashed up as she wrapped it around the general’s neck and tipped her chair over onto its side, using its weight to topple the general’s bulk. They went down in a tumble of arms and legs. Then Yu staggered up with the girl’s feet pressed against his side and both of her arms pulling on the rope of hair she’d wrapped like a noose around his throat. The wooden chair she was still cuffed to swung like a pendulum, adding its weight to the pull.

  Before the aide could rush over to help the general, he felt a press of cold metal on his temple. He turned to see the Russian holding an American-made SIG Sauer pistol, the general’s trophy from the cabinet.

  “No, no. Leave them be. I’m quite curious to see how this plays out,” Markov said.

  Tiangong-3 Space Station

  “He could be lying, sir,” said Best.

  “It is the truth,” said Chang. “We need to leave. There are maybe five ro
tations until the station orbit deteriorates enough to burn.”

  “You are telling me that I am about to lose a lot of money!” Cavendish screamed. “Why did you do it? Why destroy my station?”

  For ten seconds, the only sound in the station was the zipping up of the last body bag. The others were already sealed and affixed with tape to the station’s wall.

  “It was my duty. I had to do it,” said Chang quietly, speaking now to Best, who was clearly a soldier of some sort. He had the bulk for it, but it was more in how relaxed he looked after the battle, his eyes closed as he savored a stick of gum he chewed with steady precision. The slight one — Sir Aeric, he called himself — must be something else. He screamed more like an angry shopkeeper than a soldier.

  “Sir, we have met the objective,” said Best. “It’s a shame about the prize. But you know, we can do it all over again.”

  “Yes, perhaps the Russians will be more reasonable,” said Cavendish, calming down. “And I’ll offer to hire them, not just ask for their surrender. Carrot and stick this time. How about that?”

  “It’s worth a try, sir,” said Best. “But we need to get off the station now. This part of space is going to light up as the American ASAT missiles start knocking down the Chinese and Russian birds. Then they’ll try to launch their satellites, and the Directorate will do the same. With no one commanding space, each side will just knock the other’s satellites down as fast as they’re launched. Pretty soon any orbit above the Pacific is going to be one big cloud of space junk.”

  “Makes you wish you worked for someone who had the foresight to invest in the rocket-fuel business,” said Cavendish, starting to calculate a new set of gains. “To the Tallyho, then! Mr. Tick, are you up for it?”

  “I’m feeling no pain, sir,” said Tick. The commando’s forehead was swollen and his eyes were bloodshot.

  “You’re a good man, Tick,” said Cavendish, now studying Chang. “Best, get the men through the airlock. I will be the last to leave.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Best. “And, sir, I think we finally have your call sign. How does Zorro sound?”