by JC Ryan
Roy didn’t seem to notice. “So, this routine you’re working on, it’s going to look for the specific range of MAC addresses that are assigned to these drones, and when it finds one operating in that range, it’s going to take over the controls, am I correct?”
“Yes. What are you getting at?” Sombra was now impatient, as well as condescending.
“Then, there is no stealth problem.” Roy strolled away, lost in his own analysis of what he now knew, leaving the others to stare after him in confusion – a state in which he often left people.
Where the devil was Oleg Zlatovski?
July 20, 2020; D-day minus nine, Tehran
Dalir paced, worrying at the problem he’d been unable to solve for over two weeks now. Where the devil was Oleg Zlatovski? His last communique was that he’d been forced to leave Greece, but the fool hadn’t said where he was going. Applying a little logic, Dalir assumed he’d stay away from any and all target countries, which meant he must be in the Middle East somewhere. The question was, where?
Dalir had put his anger over the discovery of parts of the network away. Yes, it was a serious failing, but from what anyone could discover, Oleg had built the network well. Failure in one part didn’t compromise another. Now that the remaining scientists of value, those that were most expert in the nanotechnology on which their bombs were designed, were gathered in Tehran, Dalir could see for himself that most of the network was intact. True, hundreds of operatives had been picked up, but so far not one single drone operator has been arrested and one of the last messages Oleg sent to the operators had been to proceed as planned, with or without a go-ahead signal. Even if they managed to arrest and stop a few they were not going to stop all of them. The wheels were in motion; nothing was going to stop them.
The Sword of Cyrus lieutenants, the twelve advisers that Dalir kept around him at all times, urged him to move up the timetable if he believed that all was in readiness and that their plot had been discovered. He didn’t tell them that it would be impossible, because he’d lost touch with the one man who could make that happen. Instead, he told them that he’d chosen the beginning of Hajj for a reason, and that he would not strike early. A few accepted it; others urged him to reconsider. And a couple privately wondered if they had created a monster. Rather than accepting their counsel, Dalir was acting as an emperor would and doing exactly as he pleased.
Stuck between a council of twelve that believed him foolish or stubborn and the immutable fact that he did not have the means to move the timetable up but couldn’t tell them so, Dalir bluffed it out. If anyone questioned his decisions, he would teach that one, and the rest, that crossing Dalir Jahandar bore serious consequences.
Privately, he sent operatives who answered only to him throughout the Middle East, searching for Oleg. Perhaps the man was merely hiding from Dalir’s rightful indignation that his network was developing holes. Perhaps something had happened to him that left him unable to communicate. Dalir hoped it was not that. Whatever the cause, he wanted to personally teach the spy a lesson – that you cannot hide from destiny. Nor from the Sword of Cyrus.
Only a little more than a week remained. The day would come none too soon for Dalir. He wished he could move up the timetable, but it would be all right. Nothing would interfere with the plot as a whole. Sure, a few bombs may not go off as planned, but nothing could stop the great strike from happening in most of the planned targets. They could always clean up what remained with conventional aircraft and bombs if necessary, and of course, the already-planned anthrax attacks. The Army of Cyrus could not fail. He, Dalir Jahandar, future emperor of the new Persia, would not allow it.
We’ve already screwed up
July 23, 2020; D-day minus six, Washington, DC
Daniel was worried about Sam Lewis. Luke had gone home for a few days to check on security operations at Foundation Headquarters, admonishing him to take care of Sam Lewis until he got back. Even though Daniel had persuaded Sam to divide his resources to allow them to get some rest, Sam drove himself until he literally fell asleep any time he was left alone in a chair for more than five minutes. No one could persuade him to get in a real bed and get some real rest. Daniel considered calling the president and asking him to pull rank on Lewis. Then, a better idea crossed his mind.
“Luke, good morning, it’s Daniel,” he said, when his phone call was answered. He’d waited until nine a.m., knowing that even though retired, Sarah’s uncle would be awake early. He didn’t want to alarm Aunt Sally, though.
“Daniel. How’s it going?” Luke was careful on any phone call, but this one he knew called for the utmost care.
“Fine, fine. Listen, an old friend of yours is having some trouble sleeping. I was wondering if you knew of any home remedy. He won’t take medication for it.” Luke thought fast. This had to be some kind of code, but Daniel wouldn’t entrust anything important to something too obscure to figure out.
“So, he’s being his old stubborn self?” he asked, going along with the misdirection.
“He sure is. We’re afraid he’s going to start making mental mistakes,” Daniel said. Luke was fairly certain he had the gist of it now.
“I’ll give him a call, see if I can talk some sense into him,” Luke said.
“That’s what I hoped you’d say,” said Daniel. “Hey, I’ve got to get back to work. Talk to you later.” Daniel expected Luke to call Sam and make him listen to reason. He didn’t have to wait long.
Luke took the time to go to the office first, where the scrambled phone in Daniel’s office for his calls to the president provided enough security to speak clearly to Sam. After a short wait while his identity was confirmed by the switchboard at the JOCC, Sam came on the line. Daniel was right to call, Luke understood, when he heard the familiar but tired voice on the other end of the line.
“Sam, I’m calling as your friend first, and an experienced field agent second. How long has it been since you went to bed and slept eight hours?”
“I don’t remember, Luke. I honestly don’t remember.” Sam’s voice was scratchy, as if he hadn’t spoken in a while, or, conversely, had been talking for days. It was the latter that made it so. Sam had been recapping what they knew, didn’t know, and were going to do about it, for days, any time new intel came in.
“Buddy, you’ve got to get some rest. You’re going to make mistakes. And you know as well as I do that we can’t afford mistakes. Do you need me to come and help you somehow?”
“What, you’re going to sing me lullabies?” Sam joked. That was a good sign, Luke thought. At least he wasn’t delusional. Humor didn’t follow into hallucinations caused by sleep deprivation. That was more likely to manifest as raging paranoia.
“Yeah, buddy, if I have to. Seriously. Daniel called me. He’s ready to sic Harper on you with an order to stand down. You’d better get some rest.”
“I can’t, Luke. I can’t sleep with this thing hanging over my head.”
Luke tried another tactic. “You remember what we used to say to each other in the field, Sam?”
“We said a lot of stuff. What do you mean?”
“We used to say we could sleep when we’re dead.”
Sam laughed. “Yeah. And as I recall, that was when we’d decided not to take some rest. Why bring it up now?”
“Because if you and your geniuses that are trying to figure this out make a mental error, we’ll all be sleeping, for a very, very long time.”
“All right, I hear you. I’ll take some time to rest. We’ve got everyone with anything at all to contribute working on one of three or four challenges. I guess the most urgent one right now is how they’re going to trigger the bombs.”
“What does Roy think?” Luke asked.
“I don’t know. He’s working on how to capture the drones and fly them somewhere else,” Sam said.
“Sam, what the hell are you saying? You’ve got the world’s foremost nanotech expert working on a scheme to divert the drones? That’s nuts! Besides, the
pictures show the explosions taking place in the cities, or not at all. There aren’t any pictures of bombed-out countryside. That’s not going to work.”
Hundreds of miles away, Sam’s eyes flew open and a jolt of adrenaline hit that drove all thought of sleep from his mind. “Oh, shit, we’ve already screwed up. Luke, I’ve got to go. Thanks for your call.”
Turn over your project
July 23, 2020; D-day minus six, Washington, DC
As soon as he hung up, Sam sent an aide for Roy, who arrived breathless on the heels of the returning aide. “What is it, Sam?” he huffed. The aide had practically run his legs off.
“Turn over your project to Raj and his guy immediately,” Sam said. “Have you slept?”
“Yeah,” replied the bewildered Roy. “Why?”
“We’re using you in the wrong place. They need you in the bomb-trigger think tank. Go take over that project. I’ve got to get some sleep, but I’ll see you in a few hours.”
Roy nodded. “Okay, whatever you need. Have a good nap.”
Roy asked the speedy aide to guide him, slowly, to the room where the trigger was being discussed. On the way, he thought of a solution for the need for so many drones to take over the bomb-laden ones. He asked the aide to send Raj to him as he entered the room he was being shown to. When he walked in, the six men and two women looked up. Uh-oh, he thought. Women.
“I’m Roy James,” he said. “Sam sent me here to help you.” That went pretty well. All he had to do was focus on the men. Before Raj showed up in response to his summons, Roy was discussing the properties of the nanofuels, no stutter in evidence. He excused himself to tell Raj what he’d thought of.
“We don’t need the same kind of drones, just a computer program that can reach out from the air. Tell Sombra that he needs to find a way for that program to handle a hundred or more slave drones at a time. We’ll install it on a computer and use an E-3D Hawkeye aircraft to get that aloft. From a couple of miles up, we should be able to capture every drone above a given city. Sam Lewis is taking a nap, but see if someone from the Navy is available to scramble the fleet to where they need to be on the day, okay?”
The E-3D Hawkeye was the latest in a long line of surveillance and battle-management aircraft dating from the Vietnam conflict, to Roy’s certain knowledge, maybe even before. He’d always been fascinated by the strange-looking planes, their radome assembly looking like a flying saucer that had captured a turbo-prop aircraft. They had multiple workstations, among other things, that would make them perfect for this mission even though their radar and friend/foe identification systems would be largely useless. He’d leave it to the experts to figure out how to install the enhanced software that Sombra was working on in the specialized computer systems of the aircraft.
When Roy returned to the conference table where the trigger was being discussed, he asked that the people who’d already been there bring him up to speed on what they’d determined. But first, he asked if the large wall clock in the room could be disabled. The ticking was all too real a metaphor for the time that was slipping through their hands. Less than a week until D-day, and they still hadn’t captured a single MCU operator who could give a definitive answer to the question at hand - what triggered the bombs?
Roy now believed that they could take over the drones and fly them to somewhere other than their delivery points. But, where else would be any better? And how long would they have to divert them? It could be a useless exercise despite everything they’d done to develop that capability. No matter what else happened, they had to learn what the trigger was and how to neutralize it. Roy wanted to know what the group working on that problem had been doing while he’d been working on the drone detection problem.
A spokesman laid out their best guesses. Because the drones were controlled by cell phone, as Roy had determined several days ago, they thought the trigger may also be a cell phone signal. They hadn’t quite worked out how a differentiated signal would both fly the drones and turn on the onboard laser that would start the nanonuclear reaction. However, it would have the advantage of only one control device being required. That would be the most elegant solution, they felt.
Roy discounted elegant. He knew some of the Middle Eastern scientists who’d made strides in nanotechnology studies. Elegance didn’t seem to be their forte. He’d lay odds that the solution wasn’t necessarily elegant. If this were the case, though, the answer was relatively simple. In the United States, at least, recent legislation had been pushed through over cell provider objections that required their systems to have a central kill switch that would instantly shut down the cell networks. Too many domestic terrorists were using cell phones to trigger bombs from a remote location where they were safe from both detection and the effects of their bombs. Now there was an effective solution for it. For this reason alone, Roy felt it was the wrong answer.
The second option they reported exploring was that the bombs could be triggered by a radio signal. It was actually the first option they’d discussed, then abandoned when they learned that the drones weren’t actually controlled by radio. Roy thought it was worth revisiting, but kept his own counsel for the time being. He wanted to hear everything before he weighed in with his idea. The obvious answer to this trigger mechanism option was to override the signal with a powerful signal of their own.
Both of the foregoing options depended on the plotters having chosen an instantaneous-reaction method of turning on the laser in the nanobomb. If instead they’d built in a delayed reaction, it created a separate problem. It all depended on how long a delay the bombers had time for. From Oleg, they knew that the bombers were expected to die in the blasts, which meant it couldn’t be more than a few minutes. Otherwise, they’d have time to escape. Roy couldn’t conceive of the purpose in killing their own men, but Oleg’s testimony, wrung from him under duress, was irrefutable.
Assume it would be only a few minutes, then. Obviously sending in people to defuse the thing, so to speak, would be impossible. Once the reaction started, there would be an explosion, period. The minute the lasers were triggered, an ultra-fast reaction would create a devastating explosion, as his experiment in the warehouse had demonstrated. If this were the method, then only diversion would help, and then not much. There wouldn’t be time to divert them very far. Straight up? It was something to explore, but not a real solution.
All this took much more time to discuss than Roy would have liked. Because Sam had ordered each group to rest between sessions, splitting them up so that the work was ongoing 24/7, this session ended and was to reconvene in four hours. Unfortunately, there was only one Roy, so the most important asset was lost to the replacement group. By the time they reconvened, there would be only five days left before the bombs began to strike. Barely enough time to inform the target nations of the solution, and as yet, they didn’t have one.
Let the training begin
July 23, 2020; D-day minus six, Washington, DC
Until the method by which the attack drones could be stopped had been determined, Sam’s hands had been tied. Even as the military factions in the president’s advisory council chafed because their special forces operatives would need to be trained in the counter-offensive plan, he’d resisted calling them together. There was no need to have elite military sitting on their hands.
But, as soon as Raj confirmed that they had the method, it was time to bring in the Hawkeyes, their pilots and the best IT technicians to be found. One American team, consisting of a Hawkeye and its usual crew, plus one special IT tech was assigned to each target city. For the targets on foreign soil, the IT tech would be a citizen of the country in question. Any error or failure to respond in time would mean disaster, and Harper had made it clear that the US would not accept that responsibility. The foreign IT techs were due to arrive today to begin training with the American crews.
Sam had moved heaven and earth to have enough flight simulators for the Hawkeye into an empty hangar near the JOCC so that each crew wou
ld have one. Along with them came instructors who found themselves in a beehive of activity related to a threat they’d not been informed of previously. That their simulators were immediately hijacked by a civilian to install a program with which they weren’t familiar didn’t sit well. The first training to be done was theirs. With Roy controlling several of the drones and Raj controlling others, Sombra trained the instructors in the use of the hack software to take them over. Once they had the hang of it, Sombra took over Roy’s drones so he could return to his more urgent project.
By the time the trainees arrived, the enormous hangar resembled a miniature air battle, with the instructors gleefully capturing drones not only from Sombra and Raj, but also from each other.
The game wound down as the Navy special ops teams arrived and assembled to hear the mission.
Sam Lewis was to make the address, with the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Banks, present to lend weight to his words.
“Gentlemen, and ladies, you are here as the sole defense of the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia and Russia against a widespread terrorist attack that is a credible and grave threat. We do not have time to give you the background and proof of what we’ve discovered. You will have to take the word of Admiral Banks that what I am about to tell you is absolutely true.
“You are charged with intercepting and disarming, through means that you’ll be trained on for the next five days, a fleet of ordinary drones that will be carrying modern nuclear weapons of extraordinary destructive power. You will have the tools. It is up to you to learn to use them with sufficient accuracy and speed to prevent every one of them from detonating. If you fail, hundreds of thousands will die.
“As you begin to train, it may feel as if you’re playing an elaborate video game. Make no mistake, it is not a game. You must excel. You have been chosen because you are the best at what you do. Admiral Banks may have a few words for you, but I am finished here. Carry on, and thank you.”
