Rules of Engagement

by David Bruns

  “Does that mean you’re going to kill me now?” Her eyes were dark slits.

  He hesitated. That was the plan, of course. No loose ends, no dead weight, nothing to slow him down. He had a boat waiting in a hidden cove along the rocky coast. A small craft that would pass a cursory inspection as a Japanese fishing vessel. With her clearly North Korean features and accented English, she was a liability he couldn’t afford.

  Rafiq surprised himself by replying, “No, you’re coming with me.” He checked the security cameras. The commandos were on this level now, and they had at least one dog with them. He heard the distant rattle of gunfire as his former technical team tried to hold them off. The wolves were outside, but it would take time to break through the steel door of the control room.

  So-won heard the gunfire, too. Her dark eyes found his. “Chul, we’re trapped.”

  “How much longer?” he barked back at her.

  Tears streaked down her pocked cheeks. “I don’t know. The decryption program is running, but it takes time.”

  Rafiq studied her workstation, wishing for a status bar or some indication of when it would be done. He chewed his lip in frustration. If he stayed, he might hold them off for a few more precious minutes.

  Or he could run.

  He grabbed So-won by the hand, pulling her toward the back of the room. She resisted, crying, and Rafiq realized she thought he was about to kill her.

  “Stop it, So-won. I’m taking you with me. You’ll be safe.”

  He paused at the bookcase at the back of the room and slipped his hand into the second shelf, pressing the release at the back of the cabinet. The bookcase moved away from the wall, revealing a door with a worn sign that said MISSILE BAYS.

  “There’s always another way.” He pulled her into the passageway and dragged the door shut behind them.

  CHAPTER 61

  Yang-do Island, North Korea

  As the helo plunged into a steep dive, Dre Ramirez’s body strained against the three-point harness that kept her strapped into her seat. She felt more than saw the squad of SEALs tense. As a group, they dropped the unwieldy night-vision goggles from the front of their helmets down across their eyes, the four lenses making them look like something out of a science-fiction movie.

  When Ramirez followed suit, the effect on her vision was stunning. During their hasty briefing session, the petty officer who outfitted Dre and her friends had called them GPNV goggles, short for ground panoramic night vision. Although they looked like two sets of binoculars mashed together, she immediately saw the benefit. Not only could she see the ghostly green of night-vision goggles she’d worn before, but these had an infrared heat display and expanded her field of view to somewhere slightly forward of her ears.

  “Whoa,” Dre heard Everett say. “I can almost see behind me. These are cool.”

  The helo touched down and Captain McHugh was on his feet, herding them down the ramp.

  The second MH-47, its damaged engine still smoking, had managed to land in one piece. SEALs, their faces highlighted in her vision by the IR detector, streamed out of the belly of the damaged craft and automatically broke into squads. They disappeared into the green shadows of the surrounding terrain.

  Their group moved swiftly up an incline, the SEALs forming a protective cordon around them. They ran across a grassy field; then she felt gravel crunch under her boots. A wall of concrete rose out of the landscape and a square of light appeared in her night-vision goggles. Two dead North Korean soldiers were sprawled to either side of the entrance, and a steel door crusted with rust lay on the ground, blown off its hinges. In the heat register of the IR detector, the dead men’s faces registered as cooler than the live soldiers around her.

  Apart from her grandfather’s at his funeral a few years ago, they were the first dead bodies she’d ever seen.

  Two of the armed men around her raised the night-vision goggles off their faces, snapping them into a locked position above their helmets. Ramirez did the same, following the squad into the wide concrete hallway.

  They encountered another pair of dead North Koreans at the first turn in the hallway. The walls were raked with deep gouges from stray bullets, and there was a blast pattern on the wall from some kind of explosion. Her boots stuck to the floor as they walked through the fresh blood, and the sharp scent of expended rounds penetrated her sinuses.

  Deep inside the bunker, she heard more gunfire, then a pause, and return fire.

  Their escort advanced at a steady pace. No rushing, just a constant movement forward. They passed another half-dozen dead men, then a wounded SEAL with a tourniquet applied to his leg. The medic in their squad peeled off to treat the injured man.

  The lead man held up a closed fist and everyone stopped. She could hear Goodwin’s heavy breathing next to her. Ramirez gripped his elbow, and he nodded in reply, still staring straight ahead.

  “Captain McHugh?” the lead man called out. “The strike team is at the ops center. They’re placing charges now. We’ll hold till the space is secured.”

  “Give us a warning,” Brendan said. He turned to the mids and Don. “When you hear ‘fire in the hole,’ you cover your ears and open your mouth. Got it?”

  Ramirez nodded, as did Goodwin and Everett. In the harsh fluorescent light, Goodwin’s dark skin had an ashen undertone.

  A few seconds later: “Fire in the hole!”

  She clamped her hands over her ears and threw her jaw wide open. Under her feet she felt a heavy bump, and her ears popped. The lights flickered. Dust filtered down from the overhead.

  The lead man stood. “Let’s go.” He set a new, faster pace through the dim tunnels. They went down two flights of steps into what looked more like an office space. Instead of raw concrete, industrial linoleum covered the floor. Heavy dust in the air caught in her throat.

  There were more dead bodies here, but whereas the dead men in the upper levels had worn full battle dress, these corpses were in dress uniforms and looked like office workers. She saw at least four women among the dead, and the air was heavy with the scent of blood and vomit and shit. She stole a glance at her friends. Goodwin was gagging at the stench, and Everett stared straight at the back of the man in front of her.

  “It’s all right, Michael,” Ramirez whispered. She gripped his biceps, and he nodded back.

  A SEAL met them next to an open doorway. A heavy steel door, charred and twisted from an explosion but still hanging on its hinges, was jammed back against the wall. To Ramirez’s surprise, a dog sat by his side. The animal wore a bulletproof vest over his rib cage, and his attentive gaze flitted from his partner to Captain McHugh.

  “What’ve we got, Winky?” McHugh asked.

  “This is definitely their ops center, sir. Three dead inside, execution-style. Computer geeks, not soldiers. No sign of Roshed.” His eyes passed over Riley, Ramirez, and the other two mids. “The room’s cleared for your team.”

  McHugh cursed. “Roshed’s here somewhere. Tear this place apart if you have to but find him. I’ll stay here with the tech team. You can take these guys with you.” He jerked his thumb at their escort.

  “Aye, aye, sir. Sidney, with me.” The dog leaped up at the sound of his name.

  Apart from the obvious language differences on signs, to Ramirez’s eye, the North Korean control room looked remarkably like the watch floor at Cyber Command back home. The computer workstations were arranged arena-style facing large wall screens. The screens showed the East China Sea and the landmasses of China’s east coast, with Taiwan to the south and Japan and the Korean peninsula to the north. The digital map was covered with color-coded symbols that she took to be ships and other military assets.

  Ramirez paused when she saw the three dead bodies on the floor. Two women and a young man; they’d each been shot once in the forehead.

  “That’s what you get when you work for Rafiq Roshed,” McHugh said in an acid tone.

  “Oh my God,” Riley said, pointing at the wall screen. “That�
�s the entire Chinese and Japanese militaries up there. Ships, planes, even bombers sitting on the runway and their weapons loadout.”

  McHugh moved to what looked like the watch supervisor’s station. “Don, you need to see this.”

  Ramirez, Riley, and the other mids crowded around the screen.

  “It’s a decryption program,” Riley said. “It looks like it’s trying to access a separate Chinese system.” He tapped the space bar on the keyboard. “We’re locked out.” He pulled out the chair and sat down. “You three mids, find a terminal and let’s figure out how to shut this thing down.”

  Minutes ticked by. Ramirez sorted through the screens, sampling code she could gain access to, looking for a way into the system. She rolled her chair close to Goodwin and said loud enough for Everett, who was sitting on the other side of Goodwin, to hear, “What do you think, Michael?”

  He shook his head like he was trying to shake off a bee. “I don’t know. This is the first time I’m seeing the full program. It’s … a little overwhelming.”

  Everett put a hand on his shoulder. “You need to focus. They’re counting on us.”

  “I see it,” Goodwin said. He was staring at the screen. “They’re trying to break into the Chinese nuclear launch system. That’s the final step.”

  Ramirez crowded closer. Although the room was cool, Goodwin was sweating.

  “Can you shut it off?” she whispered.

  Goodwin shook his head. “It’ll just keep going until it gets what it wants. The only way is if the Chinese shut down their entire network. Everything, at the same time.” He looked up at Riley and his friends. “And I mean, like, now.”

  “There has to be another way, Michael,” Ramirez said, acutely aware that her voice had a begging quality. “Think.”

  “If there is, I don’t see it,” he said. “They’ve trained the puppy. This is the last lesson.”

  Everett sat back in her chair. “What if we give it something else to do? Distract it.”

  “I don’t follow,” Goodwin said.

  Ramirez fell back in her own chair, thunderstruck at the simplicity of the idea. “Janet’s right. We can’t stop the puppy, but we can distract it. Teach the dog a new trick. Move its attention away from the nukes.”

  “Like what?” Goodwin asked.

  Everett threw up her hands. “I don’t know. Inventory all the toilet paper in the entire Chinese army or calculate the number of bullets in the Japanese arsenal.”

  “Too easy,” Ramirez said, hunching over her keyboard, her strength renewed. It was all so clear now—she knew what she had to do. “It’s a distributed system. The program will just pass along the command and wait for an answer. It won’t actually tax the resources here on the island. We need a huge task, something that will suck up all the computing power in this place…” Her gaze rose to the wall screen festooned with symbols representing the Chinese and Japanese military units. She looked at Everett, who said, “Like activating the US Trident network.”

  Everett dragged Riley away from one of the workstations to where the mids were sitting. “We want the program to go live on Trident,” she said.

  Riley stared at them. “Are you out of your minds? You want to activate a computer virus inside the US military’s most secret network?”

  Everett grabbed his arm. “Listen. The program already has control of the Chinese command and control network. It’s going for their nukes and it will get there eventually. We need to distract it, slow it down, suck up resources to buy us some time.”

  “But what if you turn it on and you can’t turn it off?”

  Everett looked at Goodwin and Ramirez. “We’ll figure it out. I promise.”

  Ramirez felt the first twinge of doubt. She was the one who would have to figure it out. They had to figure it out. Together.

  “I need to call this in,” Don said. “Get permission.” His face was twisted in a grimace, and he rubbed his chin in rapid strokes.

  Ramirez stood. “Mr. Riley—Don, they’ll never give you permission, or if they do it’ll be too late. We need to do this, and we need to do it now.”

  Riley threw a questioning look at Brendan, who said, “Your call, Don. I’ll back it.”

  Riley swallowed hard. He nodded.

  “Do it.”

  The command to activate the virus inside the US Trident network was already queued on her screen. Ramirez dropped back into her chair and hit the return key. “Done,” she said.

  Seconds ticked by; the only sound was the hiss of the air ducts. Goodwin pursed his lips at his screen. “It’s working. The program is reallocating computer resources to the new problem.”

  On the wall screen, a US ship popped up as an active symbol. Then another, and another.

  Riley gnawed at a fingernail. “Good, now put a bullet in this thing once and for all.”

  CHAPTER 62

  Yang-do Island, North Korea

  The underground missile bays of the bunker reminded Rafiq of catacombs. Entire rooms carved out of living rock and filled with abandoned junk, including a complete mobile launcher that had been stripped for parts and left to rust away in the dampness of the tunnels.

  He cursed Pak under his breath. There was no other explanation for the speed and accuracy with which the Americans had penetrated the bunker. But Pak had never been in the abandoned missile bays. He and So-won would be safe from the attackers in here—at least for now.

  The Americans had dogs with them. A strange tickle rose from deep inside his chest. A part of his brain tried to analyze it, to categorize the new sensation. He grappled with the answer—fear. He was afraid.

  When he lost his beloved Nadine and his family was taken away from him, he swore that the world would pay his price. All this time, all these years, Rafiq had convinced himself there was no personal sacrifice too high; even death was fine with him.

  Now, with death panting at his heels, he wasn’t so sure.

  “Chul, stop!” So-won said, her voice echoing in the chamber. Her thin figure was nearly lost in the shadows.

  “What?” They were running out of time to get off the island.

  She pointed to a network terminal atop a dirty desk. “I want to see if the program has completed the task.”

  Rafiq peered down the corridor. These tunnels went on forever and the island might be crawling with American commandos by now. Then he looked into So-won’s eyes and saw her resolve. The kind of strength he should be showing. “Okay, but quickly.”

  She turned on the terminal. The ancient machine beeped and whirred to life. Rafiq tried to still his foot from tapping the floor. Finally, So-won got to the command prompt screen. “I set up a remote-access program in case we needed to look at the program from offsite.”

  Rafiq frowned. She’d never mentioned that to him before. He wondered what else she hadn’t told him.

  “Oh, no,” she said, gripping the sides of the dusty monitor. “No, no, no!”

  Rafiq squinted at the screen, but it was all a jumble to him in his heightened state of awareness. “What happened?”

  “They’re trying to activate the program on the American network.”

  “That’s a good thing, right? That will take over the US military command and control systems.”

  “No, they’re doing it to slow down the system, refocus the computing power away from the Chinese network. They’ll use the extra time to shut the program down.”

  Rafiq tried to absorb what she was saying.

  “We have to go back,” she said, standing.

  Rafiq’s mouth went dry.

  Yang-do Island

  Everett’s gaze flicked between Goodwin and Ramirez. She felt like a third wheel. The pair were completely absorbed in their work, talking in shorthand she found difficult to follow. Goodwin seemed to be onto a possible solution, but Ramirez wasn’t convinced. She kept one eye on the wall screen as the system added US assets at what felt like an increasing rate.

  Riley was hunched over another workstati
on, with Captain McHugh standing behind him. Their attention shifted from the computer monitor to the wall screen, where at least a dozen US Navy assets were showing, each ready to be taken over with the touch of a button. They talked back and forth in low tones.

  She was the only one with nothing to do.

  This room felt odd, and it wasn’t just the scent of the dead North Korean bodies lined up in a neat row in one of the aisles. It felt like she was being watched.

  She allowed her gaze to rove across the space. The SEAL team had turned all the overhead lights on when they’d searched the room, and they were still on, the harsh fluorescents casting everything in a stark cold glare. That’s what she could do: dim the lights so it was easier to see the screens.

  As she stood, a flicker of movement along the back wall caught her eye. Her brain registered it as a shadow, but in this light-drenched space there were no shadows. She turned back.

  The bookcase on the far wall was moving, easing open. She thought she saw a gun—

  “Get down!” she screamed. She threw her arms across Ramirez and Goodwin, dragging them to the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she was Captain McHugh draw his weapon. Gunshots blasted into the enclosed space with a deafening boom. Her ears rang.

  Her two friends’ eyes were white with fear. She slapped the floor and pointed to the door. “Stay down and get out,” she said.

  Everett clawed the Glock out of her hip holster and wriggled forward to peek around the corner of the workstation.

  Don was kneeling, his hand pressed against Captain McHugh’s chest. The unconscious officer still held his sidearm. Riley’s face was rigid with fear.

  Everett gripped her weapon. “You get him out of here. I’ll hold them off.” She belly-crawled past him before he could say anything.

  She could hear someone moving in the back of the room, and another sound—the clatter of a keyboard. A thought chilled her. The program now had control of the US forces. If someone accessed the system now, they could attack anything.

  Everett got on her hands and knees to move faster. The typing sounds grew louder. She zeroed in on them as coming from a workstation near the back of the room. She could hear heavy breathing and the rapid patter of keys just on the other side of the barrier.