by JC Ryan
None of this was a conscious thought in his mind as he tossed and turned in his hotel bed, his mind refusing to let go of the challenges he needed to solve in the next week or so. As he fell asleep, the last conscious thought he had was of Salome, left behind in Boulder. That thought fueled a dream that woke him up a couple of hours later-a very pleasant dream of Salome in his arms. What time was it in Boulder? A peek at his clock informed him it was three a.m. local time, therefore one a.m. Boulder time. She was probably asleep, but he needed to tell her something. Would she come to him if he asked her? In the past, he wouldn’t have dared. Now, though he was in denial born of his expectation to solve the puzzle before D-day, his survival instinct drove him to do something he would never have expected of himself.
Roy fumbled with his cell phone in the dark, eventually managing to light its screen. Despite the hour, and the fact that he had no idea what he was going to say to her, he found Salome’s number and dialed it. A sleepy voice answered.
“Lane.” Salome Lane was a consummate professional. If her phone rang at one a.m., someone must need her in her capacity as an FBI agent. She didn’t waste time berating the caller for the lateness of the hour, but instead waited for him to tell her where she was needed. If she was surprised that the caller was Roy, she didn’t reveal it.
“Salome, can you come to Washington?” Roy asked. His voice was confident, and the request sounded official.
“Of course. When?” She’d recognized Roy’s voice despite being woken from a sound sleep, and assumed he’d tell her why in a minute.
“Now,” he said, and hung up before she could ask more questions.
Salome took a moment to stare at her phone as if it could provide answers. Then she got up, packed her bags and called for an airport shuttle. She would take the next available flight to DC, following an instinct that her presence was vital for something Roy needed to do. It didn’t matter what. The scary-smart brain in that handsome head was likely the only thing that stood between the Western world and nuclear extinction, but that wasn’t the reason she would fly to him with no understanding of why he needed her. The reason was simply that he needed her, and somehow the ultra-shy man had gotten under her skin. If he needed her, she would be there. End of story.
For his part, Roy was no longer in sleep mode. Once his brain was awake, so was his body. Knowing that Salome was on the way comforted him in a way he didn’t quite understand, but that wasn’t what his brain fixated on. The first challenge he’d laid out for the analysts at the JOCC was how to detect the drones. Radar wouldn’t do it, so he had to find a different way. Until someone knocked at his door the following morning and told him where to get some breakfast, he would think about that challenge.
The second challenge was to find the frequency of whatever means the controllers would use to communicate with the drones. The simple answer to that was to collect information about what type of drone they were using. It stood to reason that, even though the bombs were of different sizes, just one manufacturer’s drones would be used. That would make it simpler to control them, since using different drones would require a much more complex control system. Roy was aware that operatives were trying to track down where the drones had been delivered, but he didn’t need that to figure out this problem. He just needed Raj to help him analyze the purchase data. He’d lay money on the idea that the data would show them the secret.
Roy had been up since three a.m., but the expected knock on his door didn’t come until seven. It was room service, delivering a breakfast he hadn’t ordered, but that didn’t matter. He sat down to eat it, unsurprised by its appearance. The Rossler Foundation had been taking care of his every need since he started with them. He took it as a matter of course that they’d provide his meals away from home as well. Half an hour later, he got in the shower and was toweling his hair dry when another knock came on the door. He wrapped the towel around his waist and went to answer it.
There in his doorway stood Salome, looking as beautiful as if she hadn’t taken a red-eye to DC in response to his summons. She took a look at his bare chest and the towel supplying his modesty and walked straight into his arms. The words he murmured into her hair had no trace of stutter.
They’ll only use one type
July 16, 2020; D-day minus 13, Washington, DC
Roy and Salome were late to the conference, not having heard the third knock at Roy’s door that morning. The rest of the Rossler group left word that as soon as he was available, the hotel would call a car to deliver him to the JOCC. When Salome walked in with him, the table was deep in discussion about how to quickly learn to detect the movements of the drones.
“I think I know how,” Roy announced, his manner calm and his voice steady. The unexpected statement served to distract anyone who was curious about Salome’s presence at his side. The two of them sat down, a chair pulled up for Salome by an analyst who was coming back to the table with a cup of coffee.
Once they were settled, Sam asked the obvious question. “How?”
“Well, first I need to get a drone like the ones they’re using,” Roy explained. “I’ll paint it with some of that stealth paint we found, and then I’ll run tests to see what we can use. I expect there’ll be an electromagnetic field, and there may be some other detectable aspects besides visibility.”
Disappointed that the answer was to do tests, Sam was a little acerbic in his response. “And how do you intend to determine all the types of drone they’ll use?” he asked, sarcasm dripping from his tone.
“They’ll only use one type,” Roy stated, oblivious to the sarcasm. “Otherwise the control would be too complicated. I need to borrow Raj for an hour or two, then we’ll know what type. But, I suspect it will be the same ones that Amazon and the pizza shops have been using for deliveries. They’re ideal for the size and weight of the nanonukes, and even have a built-in place where the payload can be mounted.”
It didn’t even take Raj an hour to determine he was right about the type. Digging into the online catalogs of a couple of the largest vendors easily showed him they were the drones with the highest sales rankings. That was driven by numbers of sales. That the rank number wasn’t supported by reviews was an even more tell-tale fact. Lots of drones were being bought, but the buyers weren’t getting online to review their new toys.
Roy made arrangements for several to be delivered to him by courier from Pennsylvania, where the manufacturer had its closest facility. Once he figured out how to detect them, he still needed to figure out how to take over their controls, and what to do with them. The danger remained that the MCU could still trigger the detonation even if it was no longer controlling the flight. Sam brought up that if he were a terrorist, he’d detonate his bombs as soon as he knew he’d lost control of them. They were a long way from a solution that didn’t still get a lot of people killed.
The questions about the anthrax bombs still remained unanswered but the strategy to counter them would remain the same as for the other drones until they received information to the contrary.
Once the drones were delivered, Roy was provided with a lab in which to do his experiments on them, and was no longer at the table where they were still discussing the potential triggers for the bomb. It was a critical error in judgment. Although Roy had been the one to suggest the methodology, other scientists could have carried out those experiments. His expertise was in the nanotechnology, and it was needed in the group that was attempting to determine the best trigger and the best way to avoid pulling it. That error lost them a week before Roy was available to lend his expertise to the right task force.
During the next three days, Roy worked tirelessly, first assembling and painting one of his drones, and then applying every measurement he could think of to detecting it. He was able to detect a weak electromagnetic signal, but then realized that the signal would become lost among all the other electromagnetic noise if it was deployed in an open area. A distinct and unmistakable method was needed. He tried mot
ion detectors. That worked, but how would they deploy large enough ones and in all of the target cities?
Roy’s busy mind turned to considering a protective dome of some sort over each of the cities, even knowing that there may not be time to build it. Besides, the current technology relied on radar, and with the stealth paint, radar wasn’t going to pick the drones up. What would work, would be quick to disseminate to all the target cities, and would reliably pick up every drone? Because if it let some through, there would still be wholesale destruction. As he paced, muttered to himself and then stopped to try out one new idea or another, Salome silently supported him, bringing him coffee when he seemed to flag and holding him in her arms when he seemed discouraged. The more Salome told him he was the most brilliant man she’d ever known, the more he brainstormed for the answer. In the meanwhile, she offered a profile of the MCU personnel to those who were working on hunting them down.
On the third day, Roy received a message from the group that was working on interrupting the control signal. Had he determined what frequency would be used to control the drones, so they could figure out a way to jam it? That was when he realized that he knew something they didn’t, and that it was the answer to both of those challenges. These drones were controlled by cell phone apps that relied on a local Wi-Fi hotspot that the drones themselves established once launched. The app latched onto the hotspot’s network and took over the drone’s navigation by linking with Google maps. All they needed to do was hijack the hotspot, disconnect the trigger-man’s link and establish a link of their own. Then they could fly the drones wherever they wanted them, probably to a remote location where they’d do little or no harm if they went off.
As Sam Lewis had mentioned, though, they still had to figure out the trigger and how to disable that. Sam was right; as soon as the controller lost control, he was likely to detonate the bombs anyway. Millions would still die, even if the explosions didn’t take place in their intended spots.
If you can make it ten, we’re golden
July 19, 2020; D-day minus 10, Washington, DC
Raj had by now trained several of the analysts to triangulate the ‘epicenters’ of the bombs. They started with the targets in the US, but were now working on those in the rest of the target countries, and were well on their way to having all of them calculated. Therefore, when Roy tapped him to help hack the drones’ control programming, Raj was free to collaborate.
To their delight, there was already some software available on a hacking site that would serve the purpose with a few modifications. The terrorists had made a major mistake when they picked their hardware. These particular drones had a media access control (MAC) address that fell within a specific range of possible addresses allotted to them alone. Those addresses were publicly specified, which had given the hacker the ability to search for those devices via a program he wrote for the purpose. The app even had the ability to sever the connection between the drone and its controller and insert itself as the drone’s new operator.
The software had been made available on the hacker’s site. There was just one problem - the site had been blacklisted and they couldn’t find it online. Articles pointed to it, but the links led to a Site Not Found error. Roy, having been on the right side of the law all his life, was discouraged. Raj knew that he was probably already acquainted with the hacker. Once again, he activated his network and asked for help finding the right guy.
Within the hour, an email with no header appeared in Raj’s mailbox. He activated a software kill switch, and then opened the strange email. In it was nothing but an IP address, appearing as a web link. More confident now, Raj clicked on the link. On his screen appeared a simulation of a Las Vegas-style billboard, with the words ‘click here for drone hack’. He clicked. Immediately, his screen filled up with Python code. Raj’s network had come through and the code was theirs. But, although he recognized the language, it wasn’t one that Raj used. They’d need to bring someone in to help with the tweaks.
Even though they’d been working alongside the federal investigation for several weeks now, Raj didn’t expect any of his hacker friends to be willing to walk into the lion’s den. However, he was wrong. Only minutes after he sent out a message asking for someone familiar with Python to step forward, he got a call on his cell phone. It always spooked him when that happened. He knew he was among the most intelligent of hackers, but he took great caution with burner phones. How they always managed to find him was both a mystery that concerned him and, oddly, a comfort. At least he knew that if the aliens ever kidnapped him, his friends would be able to track him down.
Raj’s caller was one of his guys, as he assumed. The man he knew as Sombra, pronounced sahm-bra and meaning Shadow as he now learned, was willing to come in, in return for full immunity. And tax exempt status for the rest of his life. Raj didn’t know what he’d done, and it didn’t matter now, these were reasonable demands in his opinion. He was confident that Sam Lewis would make it happen. Raj gave Sombra directions to their location and told him to get as close as he could without exciting suspicion and wait for a call-back. Then he rushed to the conference room where Sam and the others were still convened, discussing contingencies and taking analysts’ reports as they came in.
“I’ve got someone who can help us with the software to take over the drones,” he said, interrupting Sam in the middle of a sentence. “All he wants is immunity from anything he’s done up to now and tax exempt status.” Raj wondered if he should have pushed for immunity for life, too. But, as it was, Sam was looking at him as if he’d demanded someone’s head instead.
“Wait outside, Raj, please,” Sam answered. When Raj had stepped out, Sam turned to Luke. “Is he a brick short of a load?”
Luke, barely able to contain a guffaw, admitted that Raj sometimes came across that way. “You wouldn’t believe what his hobby is. But you know as well as I do that his shady contacts have been working as hard as anyone here. They’re the best – even better than the guys on the payroll.”
“All right then, he can have his immunity and tax breaks. IF he solves our problem and we all manage to stay alive. Do you mind letting Raj know, Luke? Now, where were we?”
Half an hour later, Sombra had been issued into the building, given a VIP pass, and introduced to the important men around the table, a few of whom would have happily arrested him and thrown away the key if they’d known who he was. Instead, Raj collected him and took him back to Roy’s lab, where the hack was queued up on the screen.
“As far as we know, the articles that described what this does were accurate,” Roy told Sombra almost before he’d had a chance to sit down. “We need to know for sure, and we need to know everything it will do. We may need you to fix it to do some other stuff.”
That rather vague statement was all Sombra needed to get started. First, he read the code from beginning to end. Then he explained how it worked to the other two.
“This searches bandwidth that’s allocated to these drones and locks onto Wi-Fi signals if it finds them in that range. I guess that’s how you’re going to find the drones that are carrying the bombs?”
“Yes, but where does it search from?” Roy asked.
“Oh. You have to deploy the software on a drone of your own, and fly it around where you’re looking for others.”
Roy and Raj looked at each other in consternation. They were going to have to have hundreds, maybe thousands of these things, all running this software and all controlled by someone who knew what he was doing. Was there time? Doubtful. Did they have to try? Absolutely. But first, they needed the rest of the story.
“Okay, so what does it do once it finds one?” Raj asked, with Roy looking over his shoulder at the screen where Sombra was pointing.
“This section severs the connection. Basically, it interrupts the Wi-Fi signal, so it drops, just like when your router goes down and you lose connection to the internet.” Okay, that was simple enough. Then what, they asked.
“Then it p
ings the drone’s Wi-Fi and picks up the connection itself. Now the operator can control the slave drone from his cell phone or computer, using his own drone as a relay link.” Sombra’s finger traced down the lines of code as he showed them what sections were responsible for capturing and then controlling the other drone.
“Can it go and find another one after that?” Roy asked.
“Nah, one slave drone per hack,” was Sombra’s answer.
“Okay, that’s the first thing we need to change. It needs to capture at least five others in the same vicinity. If you can make it ten, we’re golden.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
While Sombra got to work on the software and Roy went off to think about the stealth problem, Raj went to report their progress to Luke. He found Luke in Sam Lewis’s company, both drinking yet another cup of coffee.
“Sombra is confident he can get the software modified to Roy’s specifications,” Raj said, without bothering to go into the details.
“Raj, thanks for trusting us enough to bring your contacts in to help,” Sam said, smiling for the first time in days. “For the first time, I believe we may be able to win this battle.
“Just make sure he gets what he asked for,” Raj said. “When this is all over, I’m still going to need my friends.”
Raj had barely returned to the cubicle where Sombra was working when Roy was back.
“Guys, I need to run something past you. You’ve looked at the specs of those drones. If I’m not mistaken, those MAC addresses are unique, am I right? Only one device with the same MAC address anywhere in the world?”
“Of course. It wouldn’t work any other way.” Sombra’s almost condescending answer embarrassed Raj. It was true he was one of the most brilliant programmers in the world, but Roy was THE most brilliant nanotech engineer. He deserved some respect.
