DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (26 page)

“Anyway,” Sasha said. “I fended them off as long as I could, and they kept coming, so then I gave a little taste, usually of things that were stale or didn’t matter. In the meantime, I told them I could help them cover up their vulnerabilities, so would they want me to help them with their security systems? The Israelis said no, but thanks so very much for offering. The Iranians bit. And I tapped them, and I’ve been keeping up with the taps ever since, every time they update their information systems, without them knowing. I can keep tuning in to their radio station any time I want, and the Israelis would love to do likewise.”

“What does that radio station tell you these days?” Ochoa asked.

“That they’re planning an attack. That they have Julian and are going to pump him until he’s given them everything he knows and then some.”

“Show, don’t tell,” Cynthia said. “Can we see this information and how you gather it?”

Sasha sat up in her bed. “Martin will now bring me my laptop so I can demonstrate the depth of my trustworthiness.”

A minute later, they were all gathered around Sasha as best they could to watch her computer screen. After booting up her computer and connecting to the Wi-Fi modem in the cabin, she ran a diagnostic.

“Oh, oh,” Sasha said, and then sang, “Someone is watching us. With a peek, with a peep, with a poke through the hole someone is watching us.”

“That’s what you were talking about earlier,” Cynthia said, looking at Martin.

“Can you encrypt the link before you go live?” Martin asked.

“Naughty, or nice?” Sasha asked.

“Very naughty,” Martin said.

“Oooh, Martin, you are getting on my good side again.”

“Wait, wait,” Beloski said. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Yeah, it does, Stan,” Martin said. “They’re breaking the law doing SIGINT on U.S. citizens on this our beloved homeland — which would make it spying, so we break right back on them. Two wrongs and a right and all that jazz.”

“Yup. We just send their NSA decryptors into a dead spin,” Sasha said. “Just say when, and I’ll show you my trustworthiness.”

“Yeah, well, about that trustworthiness,” Beloski said. “Think about what you’re doing. If they think you’re hostile they’ll come down on us like a pile of rocks. Play nice, and they leave you alone.”

“Oh, Stan,” Sasha said. “You’re going to lecture us about trustworthiness. You, the one that sends out little videos while Martin is risking his life to keep me alive. And you, who stand by while robot-boy Ochoa phones his peeps to tell them just who is and isn’t in this lovely cabin of mine. That’s right boys, traitorous Sasha wasn’t totally out of it yesterday during all the excitement. My ears and brain were quite functional while Cynthia and Martin were gone, functional enough to watch you boys play with yourselves in private. The crap you were pumping me with didn’t protect your trustworthiness quotient.”

Ochoa cursed under his breath.

“OK, OK,” Stan said. “That happened, but we just wanted to make sure they knew we were OK, that they didn’t panic and send a team in to rescue Ochoa and me. I mean, after we gave them the coordinates, the cat was out of the bag. And maybe, well, I got a little excited about what Martin did, and I wanted to flow them the video. But that’s it. It’s harmless. And I’m telling you, if you take the NSA decryptors for a spin, we’re done here. Fold up this little discussion because it’s moot, null and void, and let’s go look at life from the wrong side of a jail door.”

“He’s right,” Cynthia said.

“Dead-on right,” Leticia agreed.

“OK, OK, you guys are no fun,” Sasha said. “We’ll go with nice but hard, just how Ochoa likes it.”

Ochoa cursed again, this time less discreetly.

“And by hard you mean?” Beloski said.

“It will take them 48 hours to decrypt the information,” Martin said.

“Seventy-two, give or take a minute, Martin,” Sasha said. “I have improved my game a little since we last danced this kind of tango.”

Stan nodded. “OK, that sounds reasonable.”

“Just do it,” Martin said.

Sasha changed a few network settings, opened a window, and launched a program. Text scrolled through the window, and then the window disappeared.

“What happened?” Stan asked, alarm registering in his voice.

“Wait for it,” Sasha said pointing at the screen. “Wait for it, and... boom.”

A graphical window appeared now, showing a map of the world dotted here and there with green circles. “Where would you like to snoop today?”

Martin looked for a minute, and pointed at the U.S. “There, that section has a couple of recent ones, the brighter ones. What’s happening there?”

“Good eye, Martin,” Sasha said. She moved the mouse cursor to one of the bright green dots, located in Colorado, and clicked. “Let’s see what the boys are saying.”

After a few seconds, a text screen opened. Martin read it aloud, “In place for Plutonuk. Setting up resources.”

Sasha clicked on a dot over Wyoming, and this time she read it. “In place for Plutonuk. Awaiting resources.” The third green dot in Nebraska showed this same message.

Before anyone could ask what that meant, Martin said, “We gave them Plutonet, they’re paying us back with Plutonuk. And this isn’t about crippling nuclear material production. Those locations are around nuclear missile silos.”

Beloski said, “Yeah, Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming controls missile silos in Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado. The WNC, some people call it. A lot of the launchers and missiles have been deactivated, and others have had their nuclear warhead capacity reduced from treaties and agreements.”

“But I’m sure there’s quite a bit there for a nice firework show,” Sasha said. “Now we have to decide whether we watch, or crash the party in full-on naughty mode.”

Chapter 36

Robert Odehl found himself back in the White House Situation Room the next morning, bright and early at 6:30 AM Eastern time, this time with a permanent badge. He drank several generous and dark cups of coffee, and by 10:00 AM he was feeling jittery.

That didn’t help his nerves when news came in that the satellite phone link from Martin’s location had gone live, and his nerves frayed a bit more when the NSA reported that the encryption was military grade and might take a long time to break.

“How long?” someone asked.

“Days not hours,” the answer came back.

It didn’t help that after a few minutes, all satellite links had gone dead. Then, a few minutes later, in a technique that surprised a lot of people, even in the NSA, three satellite links came up, and were used in a manner someone called “hopping.” Information went out, encrypted, but in sub-divided packets parsed among each of the links in a manner that seemed pseudo-random. Only the sender would know the actual order and channels over which the packets went out, and thus for someone not privy to how the packets were split and sent, rebuilding the message would require the equivalent of putting a puzzle together, without the box lid, and without knowing the shape of the pieces.

Discussion ensued around the table, and inevitably, the question came around to Odehl, “Why would Martin do that? If he’s friendly, why would he not want us to see what he’s doing?”

The best Odehl could come up with was, “Standard operational procedure and sound OpSec. He just does it as a best practice.”

“Or because he wants to show us what an awesome hacker he is,” the CIA deputy director said.

“Martin is many things, but insecure isn’t one of them,” Odehl said. “He doesn’t need to show anyone how good he is. He’s the best, and knows that’s self-evident.”

“Yeah, and with an ego like that, we should be concerned. Very concerned. For all we know, this guy thinks he’s God.”

“Sure,” Odehl said. “And if we distrusted anyone in this town suffering with the same affliction, we’d have a very empty town.”

A couple of people laughed at that. The laughter had barely subsided, when the only person in the building with the right to imagine his divinity walked into the room.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” someone said, and everyone rushed to stand up.

“As you were,” the president said. “I thought I’d drop in and do my intel briefing in here this morning. Anything new?”

Oh, yes, Mr. President, the CIA deputy director rushed to say, and he went on to give his version of the “Martin communication incident” that morning. Odehl could have done it in three sentences, but it took this guy three paragraphs and a lot of hand-waving. When he ran out of breath, the president turned to Odehl and said, “What do you think?”

“I think we don’t know.”

“I think you’re right.” The president seemed to pause then said, “I want to talk to him.”

“Well, Mr. President, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” the CIA deputy director.

“Why? Because I can listen to all of you guys blab and conjecture instead? I know where the man is, I have his number. Get him on the phone.”

“Mr. President,” Odehl said, remembering his last conversation with Spencer. “I think you’re right on track. You should know, however, that Martin, well, he has a mind of his own. Even for those who know him, well, it’s hard to talk to him.”

“I get it,” the president said. “He’s an eccentric genius and works on a different plane. I like going to a different plane every now and then, and here is an opportunity to do it without drugs. Get the man on the phone.”

“Someone explain something to me,” Ochoa said. “Why exactly we can’t share this information with the U.S. government?”

Sasha came back with, “Because, robot-boy, dear, I don’t work for the U.S. government. Not since I got my last pink slip. Well, technically Jeanette Estrada is a park ranger, and I’m sort of her, but legally, that is a lie. Wouldn’t stand in court, so there you have it.”

“This is critical information, Sasha,” Cynthia put in. “If you knew where a terrorist had planted a bomb that is going off in two to three days, wouldn’t you make a phone call?”

“That’s different.”

“It is not,” Leticia put in. “Bombs vs. Nukes? No brainer.”

Martin broke the impasse. “OK, normally I’d agree with Sasha. I’m most concerned that if we share, they interfere. I don’t want them in my way, which is exactly what they’ll do, incompetently digging into everything with heavy doses of paralysis by analysis. But if this thing goes off, and we weren’t able to stop it, I wouldn’t want it on my conscience I didn’t give the country a few hours to plan, evacuate, whatever can be done to save as many lives as possible.” Martin looked at Leticia. “You nailed it. No brainer.”

“Sometimes the best answer is the simplest one,” Leticia said.

“Oh, God,” Sasha said, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. “Well, if we’re going to do this, then let’s do it in a way that makes a splashing impression.”

“Mr. President,” someone on the speaker phone said. “You’re not going to believe this, but Martin Spencer just contacted us. Says he wants to talk with you.”

“Well, put him on.”

“It’s a little complicated, Mr. President. Spencer has sent us code, encryption keys and directions to establish a secured connection. We’re downloading his software and should have things set up in a second.”

The president looked at Odehl and said, “He’s a good man, isn’t he?”

Odehl said, “A national treasure, sir.”

“Mr. President,” the voice on the phone said. “We are scanning his software to ensure it’s clean, then we’ll do the install. We have the instructions, too. Interesting stuff. The COMM guys tell me they've never seen anything like it. But we should have you up in 3 to 5 minutes. You’ll start seeing things on your screen shortly. Sorry about that, but it’s the way he set it up.”

In another minute, an Internet browser window appeared on the screen. Then, the letters for a website address were typed one by one. The website appeared, and a “REDIRECTING...” message appeared. On the next page, an unusual login window appeared. It featured ten places to enter a user name and seven for a password. Whoever was doing the typing entered the user name in slots 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8.

“Fibonacci,” the president whispered.

The password went in slot 3.

“And now the trinity,” the president said a bit louder.

The user hit enter, and the “REDIRECTING...” message appeared again. The next site asked for permission to launch the Javan video player. When the user pressed the OK button, another login window appeared. This one had twenty slots for the user name and twenty for the password. This time the user name went in slots 17 and 23, while the password went in slots 5, 12 and 15.

“OK, I can’t spot a pattern there,” the president said.

“Probably randomly selected,” Odehl said.

“So this is what he does.”

“This is how we do it, Mr. President.”

Now an encryption key appeared, and one dot at a time, slowly, the user typed in a long sequence of letters, special characters and numbers.

“This is more for authentication than anything else,” Odehl explained. “The link is probably already encrypted with a key Martin provided your folks.”

“I see,” the president said. “Painful but instructive.”

The user pressed return, and an “INITIALIZING VIDEO FEED” message appeared. “We’re going live, Mr. President.”

A moment later, a high quality high definition video image showing a wide angle view appeared. Odehl noticed Sasha first, probably because she was waving like the Queen of England while sitting on a bed and wearing a sports bra and a bandage around her waist. At her right stood Martin Spencer, and to her left, Cynthia Spencer. At Cynthia’s left, a tall black-clad woman stood holding a sub-machine gun, and to Martin’s right, Stan Beloski. Next to Beloski, Agent Ochoa stood, also holding a sub-machine gun.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” Martin Spencer said. “Has your side turned on your VTC camera yet?”

The president made a gesture, and someone somewhere flipped a switch or clicked a button. It must have worked, because Martin smiled.

“Thank you. It does help to see who you’re talking with, doesn’t it, Mr. President?”

“Yes, I don’t know what took us so long to get rid of plain old phones.”

“OK, Mr. President, before we talk about anything sensitive, I just wanted you to see we’re all here, safe and sound. Ms. Javan is recovering, and your team is also safe, and as you can see armed and performing their duty.” Martin paused, then said, “I will now send them outside. One of them will stand sentry, while the other one circles our cabin to ensure no unauthorized personnel listen in to our communications. That’s necessary since we don’t have a vault here.”

“Thank you for your thoughtfulness, Mr. Spencer,” the president said.

At this point Agents Leticia Ortiz and Rodrigo Ochoa walked out of view. Spencer typed something in the computer on his lap, and the angle of view zoomed and panned just a little to cover only those left in the frame.

“We could discuss many things, Mr. President,” Spencer said, “but I recommend we focus on a very urgent bit of intelligence we wish to pass along to you.”

“You have the floor, Mr. Spencer,” the president said.

“Thank you. BLUF, bottom line up front, Iranian operatives are planning an attack on nuclear missile silos and surrounding facilities in the Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado area. We don’t have final confirmation, but based on other information we have seen lately, we think it’s going to be a Cyberattack. We have also strong reason to believe that Julian Rogers may be involved, probably after being coerced to do so. They are already in the area, making final preparations.”