Rules of Engagement

by David Bruns

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  CHAPTER 35

  US Cyber Command, Fort Meade, Maryland

  Midshipman Everett knocked on Don Riley’s office door. “Sir?”

  Don took a second to focus on her. He’d spent the last hour concentrating on his computer screen as he went through data logs from Trident platforms that had gone offline without warning. So far, all he’d gotten for his efforts was a headache.

  “What can I do for you, Janet?” He stretched his arms over his head to relieve the stress in his neck and shoulders.

  “I think we found him.”

  “Him?” Don blinked, unsure what she was talking about. Then he sat forward in his chair. “You mean Roshed?”

  She nodded.

  “Show me.”

  The corner of the CYBERCOM watch floor had been dubbed “Midshipmen’s Row” by some of the staff. Don liked to believe it was a testament to how much of their own time the three midshipmen had put in at the site, but he was sensitive to the fact that some of the permanent watch standers might not have meant the designation in a positive way. No matter. His job was to find the best people, and so far the mids had been performing.

  Ramirez and Goodwin were waiting for them. Both had taken off their service dress blue jackets and rolled up the sleeves of their white uniform shirts. All three looked as exhausted as he felt, Don realized.

  Everett led the briefing. “We assumed our target would be coming from somewhere in Southeast Asia between the dates you provided, so we started there. After narrowing down the pool using gender, age, and height as factors, we created a pool of candidates that had entered any airport within a day’s drive of the ranch.”

  Don scratched his chin. “That’s got to be thousands of candidates.”

  “Three thousand six hundred and seventy-two, sir,” Goodwin said. “That’s just the ones who came into South America via airports without fingerprint scanners.”

  Don nodded. That was one part of his disguise that Roshed would not be able to alter easily—his fingerprints. He could use overlays, but that increased his level of risk.

  Everett continued, “Dre—I mean Midshipman Ramirez—figured out a way to feed video footage from the area of the murder into our facial recognition program to see if we could find a match. It took five days for us to come up with this.”

  Ramirez tapped her keyboard, and a grainy image of a man pumping gasoline showed on the screen. A passport photo appeared on the adjoining screen. The man’s face was thicker than Don remembered, but the eyes were the same. He caught his breath. He was looking at Rafiq Roshed.

  “This man entered South America via Santiago, Chile, three days before the murders, under a Mexican passport in the name of Ricardo Matalan. To confirm, we traced the license plate number on the vehicle he was fueling. It was registered to a shell company in Uruguay, which led us to a law firm in Panama, which has ties to Guardian Security, in Sterling, Virginia. We did some digging and that’s—”

  “A private security firm,” Don finished. “The fucker killed them all, then took their car.”

  The midshipmen stayed silent until Don told Everett to continue.

  “Twenty-four hours after the murders, Mr. Matalan flew from Asunción, Paraguay, to Bogotá, Colombia. From there he traveled to French Polynesia. His choice of airports supports our theory that he is avoiding checkpoints that require fingerprint scans. Mr. Matalan’s records say he was there on a tourist visa and intended to stay for two weeks.”

  Don felt a surge of hope. “So he’s still there?”

  Everett shook her head. “That’s what we assumed at first, but he had taken so much care to hide his tracks, it seemed unlikely he would just hang out on the beach. I mean, he knows we’re after him, right? He even took the mercenaries’ vehicle as a way to taunt us.”

  Don looked at the midshipmen sharply. He hadn’t told them the murdered men were mercenaries. “I’m listening.”

  “Less than twenty-four hours after landing in French Polynesia, this man flew from Papeete to Manila, using a Spanish passport and the name Miguel Sandoval.”

  Ramirez put the passport photos for both men on the screen. Sandoval had bleached-blond hair, an earring, and brown eyes, but those were just distractions. Don studied the facial structure. “What’s the facial-recognition level of certainty?” he asked.

  “Eighty-nine percent,” said Everett.

  Don pinched his lip. It seemed too easy, but Rafiq’s trip to South America felt personal, not related to his mission with the North Koreans. It was possible he’d gone rogue, which meant he’d be using his aliases and fake papers as judiciously as possible.

  “Where did Mr. Sandoval travel to?” he asked.

  “Back to Manila, then immediately on to Osaka, Japan.”

  “When did he get to Japan?”

  “Five days ago.”

  “And he’s still there?”

  Everett shrugged. “Impossible to tell. If he’s left Japan, he didn’t use any official ports.”

  Don nodded, more to fill the time than to offer a response. A small boat could make the trip from the Japanese west coast to North Korea in a day, and the Sea of Japan was filled with boats of all shapes and sizes.

  “This is excellent work, all three of you,” Don said. “I’m setting up a briefing with the J2 and CYBERCOM commanding officer for this afternoon. I want you three to give the briefing. Just like you did for me. Lay out the facts and let them absorb it, okay?”

  The three were all nervous glances and smiles. “We’ll be ready, sir,” Everett said.

  “I have no doubt,” Don said, turning on his heel and hurrying away. Behind him he could hear the mids trading high-fives. Hell, they’d earned it. Because of three midshipmen, they were only a few days behind the most wanted terrorist in the world.

  CHAPTER 36

  Yang-do Island, North Korea

  The huge wall screens showed a panoramic view of the western Pacific Ocean from the Strait of Malacca to Japan. Once he gave the signal, the seas and landmasses on the maps would fill up with hundreds of live military installations. The Chinese PLA, the Japanese JMSDF, the United States Seventh Fleet. All assets under his control.

  Rafiq felt a lightness in his chest. This was what real power felt like. His power.

  He shot a sidelong glance at the young woman seated next to him. When he first arrived in North Korea, So-won had been a lowly computer coder. He’d been sent to Covert Actions for indoctrination on Pak’s word alone. He soon found that the word of Pak Myung-rok carried little weight with the military.

  Without a direct endorsement from the Supreme Leader, the general in charge of the Covert Actions Division saw no need to spend any of his precious time on a foreigner. As Rafiq barely spoke any Korean yet, the assignment to teach him about the workings of North Korean covert operations fell through the bureaucratic ranks like the proverbial stone until it landed on So-won’s desk. Her only distinctions were that she had no underlings to slough off the assignment to and she spoke English. Excellent English, to Rafiq’s surprise.

  The introverted young woman was more than happy to sit in her cubicle all day, fiddling with code and speaking to no one. But Rafiq saw the possibility in the young woman. In her, he saw native intelligence and creativity so often quashed in the DPRK youth.

  She was also obsessed with the concept of machine learning, a basic form of artificial intelligence. On her own, the young woman had obtained a bootleg copy of the code for IBM’s Watson computer and was experimenting with ways of modifying it for use by the department. Rafiq learned more about cyberwarfare in a few months with this girl than he had in his lifetime. Most of all, he saw a way for a small country like North Korea to have a major impact on the global stage.

  His experience with changing world events was deep. The attempt to detonate a nuclear device in Minneapolis had been foiled by an alert FBI agent who had followed her instincts. In hindsight, the Minneapolis strategy had been shortsighted. To ri
sk all his resources—and his life—on a single event was pointless, too easy to stop.

  He decided he needed a bigger stage, a wider platform, to strike terror in the hearts of more people. His next attempt was to dupe impressionable Muslim youth into protests that he hoped to turn into bloodbaths that would escalate into worldwide anger. Planning those events had taken nearly two years.

  Rafiq had achieved partial success. He’d managed to get a global response and excellent news coverage, but it died quickly. He needed to go even bigger, unleash even more destruction.

  Cyberwarfare was the wave of the future, he was sure of it, and as time went on, his opinion was validated. The Chinese managed to hack the US Office of Personnel Management, netting millions of personnel records from US government employees. The Russians, using a combination of covert and overt attacks, successfully manipulated the US election in favor of Donald Trump. The follow-on hand-wringing of its intelligence community only served to show the weakness of the US government.

  Rafiq was eventually pulled away from his new computer friend, given a new identity, and directed to perform a number of sensitive tasks for the Supreme Leader—under Pak’s direction, of course.

  But when he’d laid in enough political capital, Rafiq asked to create a small team of cyberwarriors with Yun So-won as their leader. He chose their first target carefully. Rafiq knew it needed to be something patriotic that would catch the Supreme Leader’s fancy, so he chose a massive entertainment multinational that had just released a ridiculous movie spoofing the Supreme Leader.

  Rafiq was amazed how easy it was to gain access to the private company. If these were the kind of cyberdefenses he could expect from a supposedly cutting-edge corporation, anything was possible.

  Their next target was the US power grid. It was a raging success, throwing the US government into churning chaos. Then Pak got cold feet. Instead of taking credit for the hack, he convinced the Supreme Leader to allow ISIS to take credit. Rafiq was denied the sweet taste of victory yet again.

  So-won came to Rafiq’s office a few weeks later. “I have an idea,” she said. She was still a shy young woman, but Rafiq had encouraged her to develop her new cyberoffense. “I call it Snakehead,” she said, after explaining how the code worked.

  Rafiq raised an eyebrow in question.

  “The snakehead is a fish, an ugly beast, but it’s a survivor. If the body of water it lives in is drained or becomes contaminated, the fish will crawl across land to find a new home.” So-won smiled at her analogy.

  “Snakehead,” Rafiq said, savoring the name. “Tell me more.”

  The phone at Rafiq’s elbow buzzed. Everyone in the room tensed. This was the call he’d been waiting for.

  “Chul?” Pak’s voice, and he sounded drunk.

  “Yes.” Rafiq kept his tone neutral. After this call, Pak’s assistance would no longer be necessary.

  “I’ve just met with the Supreme Leader. Your project has been approved. Remember, as we agreed, just the Chinese and Japanese. Is that clear? Leave the Americans out of it. We don’t want this to get out of control.”

  “I understand.” Rafiq hung up the phone.

  He turned to So-won. “Bring up the Chinese network.” The young woman nodded and bent over her keyboard.

  The phone buzzed again. Rafiq ignored it.

  The screen began to populate with Chinese ships, aircraft, and missile batteries. Rafiq had received the intelligence briefing about the Chinese sortieing their fleet in response to the Americans sending two additional aircraft carriers into the South China Sea. The area around the three Chinese claims—the Spratlys, the Paracels, and the Senkakus—was teeming with Chinese vessels. He watched as each contact appeared on the screen, then shifted from yellow to green.

  “We have established control of the Chinese fleet,” So-won said, her voice hoarse.

  Rafiq nodded. “Bring up the Japanese network.”

  Slowly, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force assets dotted the map. The Japanese had increased their presence in the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea. By the time all the Japanese and Chinese contacts showed green on the screen, nearly three hours had passed.

  “Control over the Japanese network is in place,” said So-won. She was beaming. Rafiq reached across and gently gripped her shoulder.

  “Now the Americans,” he said.

  So-won licked her lips. For a brief moment, Rafiq wondered if the young woman might refuse. Taking on the United States was a big step. Would she question Rafiq’s order?

  So-won hammered at her keyboard. The US Seventh Fleet began to populate the screen, but much slower than during the prior two connections.

  “What’s wrong?” Rafiq asked.

  So-won shook her head. “I don’t understand. There seem to be many more contacts in the US fleet than there should be. The system is maxing out our bandwidth as it tries to process all the data.”

  “Will they be able to detect us?”

  “Not a chance; the program has been running in the background for weeks, cataloging the fleet and establishing back doors. It’s like tapping into a database now. All the hard work has been done.” So-won shook her head. “Still, there’s something wrong. I’m seeing thousands of contacts, far more than I expected.”

  “Should we drop the connection?” Rafiq asked.

  She hesitated. “Let it run,” she said finally.

  So-won called a few of her programmers over, and a long discussion ensued, of which Rafiq comprehended only a fraction. Finally, the young woman turned back to Rafiq, a look of worry on her angular features.

  “We’ve tapped into something big. The Americans have built a massive distributed computing and communications platform. It’s acting like a viral network.”

  “Explain.”

  The young woman tore off a sheet of paper. She peppered the sheet with dots. “Imagine each dot is a ship. If you want to talk to another ship and it’s within line of sight, you beam your communications signal directly to them. But if you’re calling a ship hundreds of miles away, you send a signal to a satellite and it beams the signal back to the other ship.” She began to draw lines to connect all the dots together. “The Americans have built a network filled with line-of-sight communication nodes, so they never have to use a satellite if they don’t want to or—”

  “Or if the satellite isn’t there,” Rafiq finished.

  “That’s not all,” So-won continued. “Each node has spare computing power, meaning that if one ship is damaged, as long as it has a communications link, it still has the ability to fight. They’ve built a worldwide viral network.”

  Rafiq studied her face. “But you’re worried.”

  So-won nodded. “Our system can’t process that many contacts. We need to install more servers.” She drew a deep breath. “I recommend we disconnect from the US network—for now.”

  “Do it. We’ll get started with the Chinese first.” Rafiq pulled a bottle of rice wine from his desk drawer. He poured a measure into So-won’s teacup and then into his own. He raised his cup. “Your toast, my friend.”

  “To Snakehead!” So-won shouted.

  “To chaos,” Rafiq replied. The rice wine had an aftertaste like gasoline, but to Rafiq it tasted like victory.

  CHAPTER 37

  CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  Brendan stared at the giant wall screens in the Trident ops center. He sipped his coffee. “Tell me again what I’m supposed to be looking for.”

  “There,” the watch supervisor said, pointing at the center screen. “The Ford. The system status hesitated for a split second before it updated.”

  Brendan had come to the morning briefing expecting to be happy that the intermittent system outages had passed, but his watch supervisor had told him about this new issue.

  “I saw the hesitation,” he said, “but isn’t that just the system updating? I’ve been around military hardware all my working life and that kind of update lag is nothing. Besides, these shi
ps are on the other side of the world, for God’s sake.”

  The watch supervisor shook his head. “No, sir, that’s not how these systems are designed. There should be zero lag. This is the same system they use to fly combat drones.”

  Brendan rubbed his chin. That made more sense. It always amazed him how the military could operate a UAV on the other side of the world from a trailer in Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

  “What are you saying, Jenkins? We’ve got a hardware problem, a software glitch, we’ve been hacked, what? Give me something to work with here.”

  Jenkins threw up his hands. “Whoa, sir, no one said anything about a hack! This is system-wide; there’s no way someone could break into Trident and own it like that. It’s just not possible. I’d say we’re looking at a relay error somewhere in the comms hardware.”

  Brendan tried to read the man. He was clearly bothered by the issue, but he seemed to be trying to minimize it at the same time. That kind of behavior worried Brendan. He tried a new approach.

  “Let’s go worst-case here, Jenkins. Say we were hacked—”

  “Captain McHugh, we were not hacked. There’s no way.”

  Brendan sat down and waved at Jenkins to do the same. He rolled his chair to close the space between them and lowered his voice. “All right, Jenkins, just you and me talking here. No attribution, we’re just spitballing, okay?”

  Jenkins nodded nervously.

  “Good. Now, say the absolute worst case is a hack. Does that explain all these symptoms?”

  “It could.”

  “Okay, so assume the worst for a moment. How could this happen?”

  “It couldn’t, sir. The firewalls are—”

  Brendan resisted the urge to throttle the man. If he heard one more Ph.D. tell him how good their firewalls were, he was going to use him as a punching bag. “Enough with the firewalls, Jenkins. They’re impenetrable, I get it. Is there a way into the system that doesn’t involve breaching the firewalls?”

  Jenkins cocked his head as he considered the question. “An inside job,” he said finally.