Kill Switch

by James Phelan

  “First, read out the code, and we get out of here and help Jasper,” Paul said. “Then I tell you.” He motioned to the television, where General Christie was still briefing the press. “It’s because of her.”

  •

  “How did you get on with General Christie?” Somerville asked McCorkell in the reception area of the White House.

  “I got nowhere,” McCorkell said. “She’s cagey. Stonewalling. It’s not right.”

  “The whole world is looking to her on this,” Somerville said. “And you know what—she loves it. If she succeeds, this might just be what Cyber Command needs to become its own branch of the DoD, alongside the others.”

  McCorkell paused a step and resumed, falling in step with Somerville to the car. It would mean Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines . . . and Cyber Command. As a fifth branch. Cyber warfare—the new battlefront. Why not? He’d heard it debated and proposed over the past couple of decades. This meant General Christie had everything on the line. She would become a Joint Chief of Staff. She’d always been politically ambitious—maybe her ambitions went beyond that.

  “Bill?” Somerville said, holding the door open for him.

  He nodded and got into the back seat of the town car.

  Bill said, “See if Zoe can get anyone to hack General Christie’s system.”

  “Hack? You’re not going to be able to—”

  “If Chinese hackers can get every secret we have, I’m sure we can hack in on the General. Try her phone. Let’s see who she’s been speaking with.”

  74

  “The grid is the key,” Monica said, reading the words they had transcribed. “You can stop it. Come to me, not online. I’m at the place we always wanted.”

  “What’s that mean?” Walker said. “‘The place we always wanted.’”

  “I’m thinking,” Paul said, looking absently at the television. “I’m thinking.”

  “What’s ‘the grid’?” Monica said.

  Paul’s gaze didn’t move.

  “Power grid,” Walker said. “That’ll be their end game. Shut the country down—but not until we’ve all seen and heard about their previous attacks.”

  “Jasper could be anywhere,” Paul said. “We used to talk crap about all kinds of places.”

  “We should move,” Walker said. “Think elsewhere.”

  “I was going out the window to the back,” Paul said.

  “We can’t all do that,” Walker replied.

  “How’d you guys get into the building, past the cops?”

  “Some friends helped, but they’ll have moved on by now,” Walker said, knowing that Doolan’s bluff would have only worked for so long and that they would have had to leave their post by now. “We’ll head out the front door, one at a time. Right past the cops. A minute apart.”

  “I can go out the window and send the harness back up.”

  “We can sound the fire alarm,” Monica countered. “Evacuate with the rest of the building. It’s Sunday evening, there are probably a hundred people in here.”

  Walker nodded, but he didn’t like it. And it had to be the front door, because he’d had Doolan check the service door at the rear and it had been locked and alarmed by the police. The idea of spending time using Paul’s climbing gear and going up and down from the roof or out a window had little appeal, especially because he was unsure if Monica was fully functional.

  “If the fire alarm goes off, the cops will be suspicious,” Walker said, “and they’ll scan every face. If we go out one at a time, we’re each just a person leaving. They never suspected that someone is up here.”

  “Okay, so we go out the front,” Paul said, unclipping his climbing gear.

  “Wait,” Walker said, catching Paul’s arm. “Before we leave the building, tell me: what do you know about the General of Cyber Command.”

  •

  “Listen up,” Harrington said over their tactical radio earpieces. “I know you’re all pissed at what happened to our boys. You’ve every right. But revenge will come later. This isn’t just about Monica Brokaw anymore—we need to get Paul Conway alive too. He’s now priority number one. Got that? He knows something about Jasper Brokaw’s abduction, he’s an asset.”

  “What about Walker?”

  “You do what you have to do. If he’s a threat, drop him.”

  •

  Jasper punched in the commands. His fingers hesitated a moment. He knew what would happen. The attack was routed through servers in eastern Europe and eventually stopped in Russia. He hit enter.

  The US response to the cyber attack on a critical government system would be instantaneous.

  Monster-Mind.

  The nation’s first and last line of defense for dealing with cyber attacks. It detected an attack, and retaliated with a greater than proportional response, most often completely crashing the attacker’s computer networks, wiping data and creating back doors in firewalls for future remote access. Sometimes it even crashed entire ISPs, even national Internets, as it did in Syria.

  Jasper knew it because he had helped develop it.

  But what now? What would the Russian response be, when Monster-Mind hit back?

  And would that finally be enough to force the US President’s hand in using the kill switch?

  75

  “It happened in my own home,” Paul said as they clambered down the stairs. “Two weeks ago. I walked in from work and they were there, waiting for me. I was sat down. They’d found me. General Christie—she came to my house, sat in my living room, waited until I got home that day. And she gave me an ultimatum.”

  Walker stopped at the second-floor landing and checked the view below through the handrails. He kept the others halted and silent, tucked against the wall, as an occupant entered her apartment on the next level down, oblivious to their presence.

  “Okay, go on,” Walker said, leading the way down. He moved slowly and quietly, the others following his actions.

  “The General said they’d help create a better ID for me, steer me into better jobs, gift me my choice pieces of tech, and a bunch of other sweet-deal kind of stuff, if I helped them out in a security exercise. She sold it to me, and, I mean—what wasn’t to like about it? A legitimate government-issue clean slate, the most serious hardware money could buy, just for a help-out in the exercise.”

  Walker said, “What kind of exercise?”

  “A war-game, they called it. Run by the Cyber Mission Force. General Christie said it involved a virtual-range environment for its personnel to conduct training exercises and obtain certifications, while fighting a series of live, adversary-mimicking ‘Red Teams.’ She wanted my help because I was on the outside and had no connections within Cyber Command.”

  “And you’re sure this was General Christie?” Walker said.

  “Yes. She showed up with a group of heavy-set guys, a paramilitary-type outfit. Serious. Almost carbon copies of what we saw before. Maybe the same exact crew. Six of them. And the General. She was in charge. She told me to just call her General—she was in plain clothes, never gave me her name. But I did some digging after they’d left. There’s not that many female Generals in the US Army. I found her image online, saw that she’s the head of US Cyber Command’s offensive team.”

  “And what did she want from you in this exercise?” Walker stopped them on the first-floor landing. He wanted to hear this before they left the building.

  “I had to reach out to Jasper, ask for his help.” Paul looked to his feet. “She said he was the best operator she’d seen. She wanted him running a Red Team unit to test out her guys. It was all about sharpening Cyber Command, giving them a unified command-and-control platform for fast-moving and large-scale cyber operations, particularly for offensive operations. When I told Jasper, he jumped at it. Loved the idea of doing an off-books deep probe to test out what the US military could do in the face of skilled cyber attacks.”

  “You . . .” Monica said, her voice low, and she was right up in Paul’s face
. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time. You gave Jasper up? To what end? Are you saying all this isn’t real? It’s all just some kind of war-game?”

  “It’s real,” Paul said. “I know it’s real because of that code he sent out. He wouldn’t have done that unless he was in trouble. He needs me to help stop the attack on the grid—he needs us to get him out. And there’s no way—no way in hell—that the cyber attacks so far would have been sanctioned for a war-game, right, Walker?”

  “Right.”

  “So, what?” Monica said. “You’re saying that General Christie is what, exactly? Corrupt? A traitor? She lied to you to get Jasper involved in a situation that had him abducted and forced to attack his own country? Why?”

  “We’ll find that out,” Walker said as he started walking down the stairs again. The others followed. “But it’s happened before. Happened a few times, and been proposed many times. It’s not just endemic to the US, or to recent history. When you have a military, it’s going to be made up of all kinds, and they’re going to have all kinds of motives. It’s always been that way. For some, self-interest trumps all.”

  “Paul,” Monica said, “why does Jasper think you can help him stop the attack on the power grid? Because you’re the one who got him into this?”

  “No,” Paul said. “He’s reached out to me because I worked on the security patches. If anyone can attack the grid, it’s me. In fact, only me.”

  Walker stopped at the final landing, said, “But he can get around them, right? Hack the DoE servers? Overload the grid or shut it down?”

  “He can’t, not that way,” Paul said, looking to Monica. “A year back I was tasked with what my company does—penetrating networks. When I led the team testing out the DoE’s new security, I got in. They patched it. We got in again. They asked me what I’d do—and I made it secure for them. They had two other firms try to break in, but they got nowhere. I’d made it as unbreakable as a crypto can get.”

  “You said no crypto was unbreakable,” Walker said.

  “Technically, that’s true,” Paul replied. “But this one is different. It’s unique.”

  “You created your own code,” Walker said. “A human code, like what Jasper sent you.”

  Paul nodded. “Like that but advanced. When I set up the security, I put a code in there. It’s got a human-made code, just like the book code—it’s simple, but you need the key to unlock it.”

  Monica said, “What’s the key?”

  “Not what,” Walker replied, “but who.”

  “It’s me,” Paul said. “I’m the key.”

  76

  Walker shook his head. He didn’t like this. Not at all. Paul was set up to bring Jasper in, and now Jasper had penetrated the Department of Energy’s network, seen the code that he recognized, and was now calling Paul in. To Walker’s mind it was simple: keep Paul away, stop the attack on the grid.

  “Jasper knows that you’re the key,” Walker said.

  “Yes,” Paul said.

  “How could he?” Monica said.

  “He’s already been in the DoE systems,” Walker replied, “he’s seen Paul’s code, recognized it. So, he knows that he needs Paul there to unlock it.”

  “That’s right, and I can,” Paul said. “I can get in there and do the job. At least, I can go there and offer up a trade—me, for Jasper.”

  “Why would you do that?” Monica said.

  Paul looked at his feet. “When your brother and I were caught, it was worse than you know. The deal he made, working for the NSA? That got me five years. It was me, Monica, who did the crime, and I deserved to do the time—I was the one who pushed and pushed, always wanting more. Deeper penetration, more sharing of classified information. I could have been a Manning—should have been—doing life in a Leavenworth-type place. But he did the deal and agreed to work for the government to commute my sentence, and I did five years in what was essentially a white-collar resort. I owe him for that.”

  “So, what?” Monica said to Paul. “You’re just going to go in there and do the work of the terrorists, of General Christie? You think they’ll even trade him for you?”

  “Like I said, I’ll offer the trade,” Paul said. “Me, for Jasper. I can finish what they want. And I owe it to your brother.”

  Monica shook her head. “Why should I believe you now?”

  “Is there any way that without you they can get into the energy grid?” Walker asked. “Any way at all?”

  “It’s unlikely, but I can’t rule it out. If Jasper tries to get into the Department of Energy’s servers, he’ll be Trojanized,” Paul said. “He’ll go in hiding behind a packet in a firewall. It’ll appear that he’s got a legitimate header, like an ID number, in order to pass through detection. But hidden within that is a separate, hidden packet, and that’s the Remote Access Tool. A RAT. And that RAT is going to sneak around, de-cloak, scoot off and scurry around like a rat—and open a door. But the thing is? No matter what, he can’t open it. Because the lock on that door was made by me, and can be opened only by me. Every attempt to hack it just makes it more impenetrable. Any malware he enters to worm its way around gets frozen out by the program’s code—I designed it so that it changes the code of legitimate applications as they run, starving the malware by denying it the system resources it needs to operate, killing it.”

  “But there’s a way in,” Walker said. “A code you put in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like a book code.”

  “Like that, and given that he knows me . . . he just might be able to get in there without me.” Paul reached into his pocket and retrieved a die. “It’s a random sequence of twelve words intersected by a series of numbers twelve digits long. It’s impenetrable because it was created by a human, and I set it via rolling a die, and only I know the sequence and the words involved.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  Paul looked at Walker for a moment, clearly wondering if Walker really needed an answer, then he said, “It’s the hacker in me. I couldn’t not create a back door into the DoE.”

  Walker merely nodded and headed down the final set of stairs. “I need McCorkell to get to General Christie,” he said. “If she organized this from the start, she’s the one who has got Jasper someplace.”

  “Somewhere he and Paul always wanted . . .” Monica said, walking alongside him.

  “It wasn’t meant to be real,” Paul said, falling into step behind them. “The General said it would help. Help me, help Jasper, help them, help defend the country. It wasn’t meant to be real . . .”

  Walker said, “Does the General know of your work on the DoE?”

  “Probably.”

  “Because of the coded back door?”

  “No. I told no one about that. But Jasper would recognize my work. So, I figure he’s buying time with his captors, so that I can come in and help out.”

  Walker stopped inside the entry hall by the mailboxes; double doors ahead led to the street. “When we drove in here, there was a gas station next to a bar, around the block to the southwest. We go out the front door here, a minute apart, and we meet at that bar. I’ll head north and go around. Monica, head south, then cross two blocks down to head west. Paul, go out the door and straight across the road and take whichever route you like. We meet in that bar in ten minutes. Got it?”

  They nodded.

  Walker said, “Show time.”

  77

  Walker was the third out the door of Jasper’s apartment block. On his way by the rows of mailboxes he lifted some junk mail and flicked through it as he passed the cops on the footpath, his cap down low and the visor covering his face as he turned and headed up the street.

  He walked a block and rounded back toward the gas station and bar. There was a string of shops, each more hipster than the last. A French patisserie that sold macaroons. An organic butcher. A cafe that either served gluten-free wi-fi or something else entirely—hard to tell. A florist that specialized in mosses and prairie
grass for fifty bucks per bunch or ceramic cup full. And at the corner, next to the gas station, was the bar: Firewood. Another hipster hallmark: taking an unrelated noun and repurposing it as a business name. Walker passed the front window and glanced in; he saw Paul and Monica sitting at a table, and he continued on to the gas station, where for three dollars forty he bought the best map of the area available. He headed back to Firewood.

  Inside was dark; the only windows faced east and the sun was already setting, and the lamps, though plentiful, were in green shades and low wattage. Walker thought that the dim atmosphere combined with the beaten-up old wood paneling suggested what once might have been an Irish bar before it started serving cocktails out of mason jars at fifteen dollars a pop. It was empty but for a group of hipsters in a far corner, dressed in lumberjack shorts presumably made of organic cotton and discussing things so obscure no one outside their clique would understand.

  Walker dropped the map on the table between Monica and Paul and headed for the bar.

  “You believe this cyber shit?” the barman said, not looking up from his phone. “You should read what they’re saying on Reddit about all this. No way will the Internet go down—or the power. It’s all a big load of BS, the government’s got all that protected.”

  “Pay phone?” Walker asked the barman.

  “Pay phone?” the barman said, looking up, a wry smile on his face.

  “Phone. Put money in it. Make a call.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure, back there,” the guy replied, looking at Walker strangely. “About a decade ago.”

  “Right.” Walker pointed to the phone in the guy’s hands. “May I please use your phone?”

  “Do I look like the telephone company?”

  “Two-minute phone call,” Walker said, putting fifty bucks on the counter and keeping a couple fingers on it. “Consider yourself the modern equivalent of a payphone.”

  “Apparently that’s what I am now,” the guy replied, passing over his cell phone and holding the other end of the offered bill. “Two minutes.”