Phantom

by Ted Bell

  “A distinct possibility. Or, perhaps it was secretly smuggled aboard by one of your own crewmen who himself wished, for whatever his reasons, to attack America.”

  “That is entirely possible. I love my men. But I cannot vouch for the sanity or loyalty of each and every one.”

  “Tell me, Captain, is there anything else regarding this incident that I need to know?”

  “Well, yes, as I endlessly reconstructed the events in my mind, something did occur to me that may have been relevant, I don’t know—”

  “At this point, everything is relevant, Captain.”

  “Prior to the takeover, Ivanov-Pavlov, my executive officer, informed me that we were getting repeated power spikes from our reactor. On a regular basis. But he could see no indication of anything amiss on any of the monitoring systems, nor variances in the cooling systems. Nor did the surges affect normal functions and operations of the digital computers that controlled all onboard systems. Sound familiar, Commander?”

  “It does indeed, Captain. Sounds just like the Stuxnet worm at Natanz taken to a far higher order of magnitude. Your sub is vastly more complex than a nuclear centrifuge. It’s common knowledge that there’s a new arms race, a race to be the first to wage war with cyberweapons.”

  “Yes. I think perhaps I was the very first victim in this race.”

  “Thank you, Captain Lyachin. You’ve been very helpful. I believe you. And I shall do what I can to help you.”

  “One more thing before you go, sir. I will tell you that I have spent most of my adult life as a submariner and a scientist. And I will tell you that in those desperate moments when we were losing control of Nevskiy, I brought my thirty years of experience and knowledge to bear in order to stop those two torpedoes from launching. But there was simply nothing I could do. I knew that my career, my promised elevation to admiral, and probably my life was over. And that I would never see my wonderful wife and family again. Can you imagine a man in that position deliberately destroying his career and his life by sinking the ship of our nation’s ally?”

  “No, Captain, I certainly cannot.”

  “Commander Hawke, you may not save my life, but you have brought the first ray of hope into my life since those two torpedoes left my boat. For that I thank you, sir.”

  It was time to go.

  Hawke looked at Svetlana and said, “I think we’re finished here.”

  “Ah. Do you have what you need?”

  “I do. Do you?”

  All alone in Putin’s luxurious private quarters, shortly after takeoff on the return flight to Nice, Hawke’s first instincts were to pick up the sat phone and call the Russian prime minister. At the last second, he’d seen the videoconferencing monitor on the bulkhead and put in a call to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, instead.

  He asked to be put straight through to the director. Tracy Stillwell, Brick Kelly’s longtime personal assistant and a friend of Hawke’s for many years, picked up the phone.

  “Tracy, hello, it’s Alex Hawke calling for the boss. I don’t care how busy he is. Tell him it’s a matter of utmost urgency.”

  “No can do, Alex. He’s not here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s aboard Air Force One with the president, the first lady, and the secretary of defense. They’re en route to California to attend a memorial service for that famous Stanford scientist who committed suicide. Dr. Waldo Cohen.”

  “My God, he’s dead? I had no idea.”

  “Just happened yesterday. A real loss for our side, I’ll tell you that much. The director told me that man was the bona fide genius behind our race to achieve global supremacy in the field of AI.”

  “A race the West cannot afford to lose.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Tracy, can you put me through to Air Force One? Set up a videoconference with the president, the secretary, and Director Kelly? What I have to say is something all three of them need to hear. It’s vitally important.”

  “Yes, I can probably do that. Let me try to set it up with the president’s onboard staff and call you back. Where can I reach you?”

  “I’m, uh, well, I’m aboard Vladimir Putin’s private airplane, en route to Nice.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s a long story, Tracy; I’ll buy you a drink next time I’m in Washington.”

  “Umm, sounds good.”

  Twenty-one

  Aboard Air Force One

  Angel, as her crew calls Air Force One, has four engines slung under her massive wings. They are General Electric F103-GE-180 turbofan engines. Each one of them is rated at 56,750 pounds of thrust. That equates to an 800,000-pound machine capable of near-supersonic speeds. Although it is not an advisable maneuver, the four engines are powerful enough to stand Angel on her tail and make her climb straight up. So far, that maneuver had never been necessary.

  But we live in dangerous times.

  Today, for example, Air Force One was making a transcontinental flight from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco. Normally, the presidential aircraft would make the flight alone. But today, due to America’s defense readiness having gone to DEFCON 3 over the Russian submarine incident, things were different. Angel had four USAF fighter escorts, designated “Red Team,” in attendance. Two McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagles up front, and two aft, all in tight formation, maintaining a one-mile separation from the beautiful blue-and-white 747.

  Whenever the president or secretary of defense travel, a highly modified C-20C Gulfstream IV always shadows their aircraft. Should the president land at, say, London’s Heathrow Airport, the C-20C will land at nearby Royal Air Force Northolt and remain on runway alert. Its function is to provide backup transportation in an emergency as well as communications support.

  President Tom McCloskey stretched out his long legs, admiring his new Tony Lama custom cowboy boots with the presidential seal. He wore navy blue suits, white shirts, and red ties now, but he still looked like the Montana rancher he’d been before coming to Washington. He gazed out the large porthole window of the presidential suite’s private conference room. He was checking out the F-15 Eagle flying the Red Two position, streaking through the sky off the plane’s starboard side, a thin white contrail in its wake.

  Damn! Four government folks traveling out to California for a funeral and it takes six airplanes to get them there!

  McCloskey turned to his wife, Bonnie, who was seated on a leather sofa to his left, quietly doing needlepoint, and said, “You know, Bon, it’s a good thing old Al Gore ain’t keeping track of my movements today. Hell, I’m stomping carbon footprints a mile wide across the whole damn country on all burners. I’m a one-man ecological disaster, creating my own damn personal hole in the ozone.”

  “Yes, dear,” Bonnie said without missing a stitch. “That would be funny if it weren’t true.”

  “Drives a Chevy Suburban, y’know,” the president muttered under his breath.

  “Al Gore does not drive a Chevy Suburban.”

  “Not since they got that picture of him in it.”

  “Don’t start, Tom, please.”

  “When is this teleconference going to start up, anyway?” McCloskey asked Chief Master Sergeant Steve Lominack, currently placing pads and pencils around the conference table. “And who is this fella Hawke that wants to talk to us, Brick? You were in an Iraqi prison with him, that right?”

  The CIA director smiled and said, “Yes, sir. And I’d be buried there today if it weren’t for him. After a few weeks, he decided I couldn’t survive another day of torture. So he woke up one morning, killed a bunch of guards, put me on his shoulders, and walked across the desert for a few days until he found some friendlies.”

  “Sounds like my kind of guy. Now, he’s MI6 or MI5, right? In London?”

  “Six, sir, unde
r Sir David Trulove, or C, as they always call the director. I’d say Alex Hawke is the single best counterterrorist operative they’ve got, Mr. President. You remember when the Royal Family was held hostage at Balmoral Castle?”

  “Who can forget? It was on the damn TV twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Well, Alex Hawke single-handedly engineered and executed that rescue with virtually no loss of life, starting with the Queen of England herself.”

  “Well, hell, I’m looking forward to meeting him on the TV. Fire it up, will you?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Chief Steward Tim Kerwin said. “Mr. Hawke is coming up on the screen now.”

  “I see him. Hello, Mr. Hawke, this is President McCloskey. I can see you, can you see me?”

  “Yes, sir, I can, quite clearly, thank you.”

  “Well, I want to thank you for joining us. With me are Secretary of Defense Anson Beard; your old friend CIA director Patrick Brickhouse Kelly; and my lovely wife, Bonnie. Now, Brick here tells me you went to Moscow to interview that Russian sub driver, Lyachin, who sank our cruise ship, that right?”

  “I just left him an hour ago, sir.”

  “What’d you find out?”

  “Mr. President, in my opinion, based on that interview, the Russians, the Kremlin, and Captain Lyachin had absolutely nothing to do with the sinking of the American cruise ship. I believe Prime Minister Putin has been telling you the truth, sir.”

  “Well, with all due respect, Mr. Hawke, the navy divers found two torpedo propellers down there on the bottom. They’ve both been positively identified as coming from extremely high explosive Russian torpedoes. Isn’t that right, Mr. Secretary?”

  “That’s correct, sir,” Beard replied.

  “Well, Mr. Hawke, how do you explain that?”

  “The torpedoes were definitely fired from the Nevskiy, sir. The fish loaded were live torpedoes, not deadheads. They were in the midst of conducting a dry fire practice launch as ordered. But Captain Lyachin and his crew had nothing to do with launching live torpedoes at an American vessel.”

  “Say again?”

  “The sub’s digital controllers, the computers that run her reactor, all her systems including weapons, were infected with an unidentifiable, untraceable cyberweapon that seized control of the entire submarine.”

  “Now, Mr. Hawke, let’s be clear with each other. You believe this fella isn’t just trying to get his ass off the hook?”

  “With all due respect, sir, I believe he’s telling the truth, sir. He’s a former physicist and an engineer, Mr. President. He knows what he’s talking about. He’s analyzed the sequence of events and identified the causes of that tragedy. A cyberweapon infected his submarine.”

  “How the hell could this happen?”

  “The best analogy is the Stuxnet worm that infected the Iranian centrifuges at Natanz, sir. His sub was targeted by a new generation cyberweapon, except the one that infected the Nevskiy is vastly more sophisticated than anything we’ve ever seen before. Certainly the U.K. possesses nothing remotely capable of taking over an entire naval vessel’s systems.”

  “Mr. Secretary, what do you think?”

  “Somebody has to have made a giant leap forward in technology, but, yes, I suppose it’s possible. Taking cybercontrol of enemy vessels is one of the highest objectives of our own program. We’re nowhere near close, sad to say.”

  “Okay. Let’s say you’re right. So who’s behind the attack, Mr. Hawke?”

  “I have no idea, sir.”

  “Well, I know you don’t work for me, but from what I hear, I’d sure as hell be grateful if you could help me find out the answer to that question.”

  “Those are precisely my intentions, Mr. President. The director of MI6, as you may know, has ordered my counterintelligence unit, Red Banner, to find out who sank that cruise ship and how. Since Red Banner is composed of both MI6 and CIA assets, I also report to Director Kelly as well as Sir David.”

  The president turned to Kelly.

  “What do you think, Brick?”

  “I think that if Alex Hawke says the Russians had nothing to do with this, then the Russians had nothing to do with it. Alex, was your entire interview with Lyachin taped?”

  “Yes. I will make a call immediately and get a copy of that tape electronically transmitted to Air Force One as quickly as possible. Sorry I didn’t think of that before.”

  “You got nothing to be sorry for, son. No idea how you pulled off this interview, but I’ll tell you what. You just saved all of us a lot of useless hand-wringing over what the hell Putin was up to. Now we just need to learn who possesses cyberwarfare technology at this level. Anson, could you give us an update on who the major players are in this new cyber arms race?”

  “Certainly. In no particular order, the countries using linked supercomputers to advance these kinds of AI programs the most rapidly would be Israel, China, Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and, possibly, North Korea. If I had to guess, based on the most recent intelligence I’ve seen, China has taken the lead in this field.”

  “If I may, Mr. President,” Hawke said, “based on that list, I would say our primary suspects are China and North Korea.”

  “It’s a place to start, Alex,” Brick Kelly said. “So let’s get started.”

  At that moment, there appeared to be a power failure; his teleconference screen went black. Alex Hawke had just lost his connection with Air Force One.

  “Red One Leader, I got a little glitch here, over,” USAF Lieutenant Mick Millard said to his wing commander. Millard was flying the Red Three position off Air Force One: one mile aft and to starboard.

  “This is Cheyenne, Sixshooter,” Captain Steve Powell, the wing commander flying the Red One slot to port said. “Talk to Papa.”

  “Yessir. I . . . uh . . . had three unexplained turbine power surges. Squawk’s out . . . and . . .’’

  “And what?”

  “Shit!”

  “Sixshooter, are you declaring an emergency?”

  “My gear’s lowering and retracting! Shit! All by itself! What the hell?”

  “Sixshooter, Cheyenne, break off! Break off! Out of formation, that is an order, now!”

  “I . . . uh . . . wait a minute . . . I . . . uh . . . can’t . . . nothing is responding . . . ailerons . . . rudder . . . the damn plane is flying itself, sir . . . like automatic pilot . . . I have no control . . . None . . .”

  There was a blast of static as USAF Captain Powell contacted the cockpit of the president’s airplane.

  “Air Force One, we have a serious problem at Red Three. Systems malfunction. Pilot reports . . .”

  “Red One Leader, break, this is Sixshooter, my radar just lit up . . . what the—”

  “Air Force One, take immediate evasive action . . . deploy chaff . . . flares . . . I say again, immediate evasive action . . . F-15 on your aft starboard quarter is a bogie . . .”

  “Red One Leader,” said the incredulous captain on the big 747, “are you saying one of our own damn—”

  “Air Force One, dive! Dive! You have armed Sidewinders at your zero angle, sir!”

  “Hostile situation alert,” the captain said calmly over the airplane’s intercom. “All crew and passengers. Seated and buckled up. Now.”

  Suddenly the giant 747’s nose pitched down, the aircraft now in a nearly vertical dive, and the pilot deployed defensive countermeasures. At the tailcone section, just above the auxiliary power units, was the MATADOR IRCM (Infra-Red Countermeasures System). This device, activated in response to a direct missile threat, spews out signals of such intensity that an incoming missile, homing onto hot areas, the engine exhausts, is suddenly overwhelmed by so many false signal noises that it loses its lock and flies past the target. These same systems are also located above the four engine nacelles, all aimed aft.

 
; The wing commander, call sign Cheyenne, peeled away and did a “bat-turn,” a tight, high G, turn that put him right on Sixshooter’s tail.

  “Sixshooter, I order you to eject immediately. Affirmative?”

  “Arming the seat, sir. Shit, that’s working at least . . . independent system . . .”

  “Pull that goddamn red handle, son. Right goddamn now!”

  “Sir, I’m trying, but . . .”

  “But nothing. I’ve got you locked on. I’m giving you exactly five seconds to get out. Then I’m pulling the trigger . . . on my mark, five . . . four . . .”

  A keening alarm could be heard from inside the cockpit of Sixshooter’s F-15. His missiles were armed and about to launch. His voice cracked and broke as he made his reply. “Pull that trigger now, sir. I got a rogue Sidewinder with the fuse lit. Launch right now, sir, before this damn—”

  “God bless and keep you, son,” Cheyenne said, and launched his missile.

  “God bless America, sir,” were the last words heard from Sixshooter before he and his aircraft were vaporized.

  Red Team Leader’s AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air heat-seeking missile homed in on the exhaust of Sixshooter’s F-15 Eagle. A conical sensor in the missile’s nose cone registered optimum destructive range and triggered the warhead.

  Lieutenant Mick Millard, Sixshooter, died instantly in a blinding ball of flame. Aboard Air Force One, Captain Dickenson leveled off at ten thousand feet and immediately notified the president and Angel’s entire crew that the threat had been nullified.

  A few long minutes later, Colonel Danny Barr, Angel’s copilot, along with the airplane’s physician, Doctor and Rear Admiral Connie Mariano, peeked into the conference room. Once the rogue F-15 had been destroyed, the 747 leveled, completely unharmed save for the nervous systems of everyone aboard. Colonel Barr was deeply relieved to see the president and everyone else buckled in. Scared, dazed maybe, but unhurt.

  “Everybody all right? Sorry, Mr. President, I know we didn’t give you much of a heads-up to strap in tight before we took evasive action.”