Savage Road

by Chris Hauty

  * * *

  PARTICIPANTS JAM THE Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing for an emergency meeting of the National Security Council. Every seat at the expansive conference table is occupied. Aides stand two-deep along two walls. Richard Monroe enters the room, looking unusually haggard. Only Hayley Chill, among all assembled in the room, comprehends the true extent of the president’s inner conflict. Despite the mercenary nature of their connection, she cannot help but have compassion for the man. Up to this point, his deception has been flawless. No one in the room has the slightest shred of doubt regarding his nationality and allegiance. But assessing the president’s distracted expression, Hayley Chill worries the president’s usually fierce resolve has begun to bend under the weight of his impossible situation.

  Everyone in the room stands with Monroe’s arrival and waits while he makes his way to his chair at the center of the table. Without a clear reason, the world’s most powerful man pauses where Kyle Rodgers and Hayley stand along the back wall.

  “Ms. Chill,” the president says, cryptically, fixing his gaze on her.

  “Mr. President.” Her return of his greeting is both neutral and respectful. But Hayley’s mind races. What is Monroe trying to say to her?

  He holds her gaze for another awkward moment and then takes his seat. He gestures in Hayley’s direction.

  “That young lady saved my life, in case any of you didn’t know.”

  Of course, everyone in the room knows the full details of the assassination attempt and respond with throttled silence.

  Monroe continues his awkward digression, saying, “Saved my life when they tried to kill me.”

  The assembled council members don’t know how to respond. Their anxiety is palpable. Clare Ryan steps into the void of the collective muteness. With a carefully modulated tone, she says, “Perhaps we should hear from General Hernandez first, Mr. President? His best people are on this.”

  Hernandez, seated at the far end of the table, clears his throat to speak. But Monroe interrupts the general with an impatient gesture.

  “I already know what he’s going to say, goddammit. The Russians! The Russians have done all of it!”

  The officials gathered around the table exchange more looks of deep concern. Vice President Landers clears his throat more loudly than he intends.

  Kyle Rodgers steps forward and bends down to speak discreetly, into Monroe’s ear. “Mr. President…”

  “Anyone want to know what I think? Those Chinese sons of bitches are behind this business. Or the North Koreans, for Christ’s sake. They can’t afford to hit us with anything real. Cyber is one helluva bargain compared to an intercontinental missile.”

  Once again, stunned silence follows the president’s outburst. Hayley aches to do something to help, but inserting herself in the situation would be wildly inappropriate. Prone to act decisively, it pains her to do nothing.

  Clare Ryan isn’t similarly restrained by protocol. She thumps the table with her closed fist, hoping to take everyone’s eyes off the president. “Mr. President, that is exactly the point. If we can’t go on the offensive because of our inability to determine the identity of our attacker, isn’t the most prudent course one that protects us? Sir, with an executive order from you, DHS can begin building defenses into the civilian sector that would mirror those already in place for government networks. This is our sworn duty as public officials. We must protect the people first.”

  Ryan’s proposal is a direct challenge to Hernandez’s ownership of all things regarding cyber warfare, whether offensive or defensive. Not a sitting member of the National Security Council, however, he speaks only at the behest of the president or NSC member. For the time being, at least, he must remain silent.

  Richard Monroe says, “Maybe we should ask Hayley Chill what she thinks?”

  Audible gasps greet this latest aberration of presidential behavior. The president seems oblivious and swivels around in his chair, looking to Kyle Rodgers’s twenty-seven-year-old chief of staff. “Ms. Chill? Want to jump into this?”

  The focus is on Hayley now. She must exercise extreme caution and not panic. With cool deference, she says, “Sir, with the assistance of the members of this council, I’m sure you’ll make the proper assessment and undertake the appropriate course of action.”

  For a long moment after Hayley’s statement, the room wallows in shocked disbelief. Kyle Rodgers, sensitive to the gravity of the situation, positions himself directly behind Monroe’s chair. “Unfortunately, the president will have to cut this short. We’re due upstairs for a briefing of the Gang of Eight,” he says, referring to the eight members within the US Congress that possess a highest-level security clearance. “Mr. Vice President?”

  Landers looks startled to be called upon by the president’s senior advisor and seems woefully ill-prepared to take over the meeting. What comes out of his mouth aren’t so much words as guttural posturing.

  Monroe appears confused by his sudden departure from the meeting. More aides enter the room. A scrum of officials gets the president to his feet and out the door. With the vice president’s failure to take up the mantle, everyone in the room stands up from the table. The meeting is presumed concluded.

  Clare Ryan pauses to have a word with Hayley on her way out the door.

  “You handled that well, though I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Ma’am, the pressures could get to anybody. The president isn’t Superman.”

  “The other cabinet members will have to be apprised of the situation.” Clare isn’t above some gallows humor. “Look on the bright side. We’re not bombing Moscow.”

  “No, ma’am.” Hayley debates whether to say what’s on her mind. “Madam Secretary, I have reason to believe that Cyber Jihad might be a cutout operation for the Iranian intelligence service. More repercussions from the hit on Major General Suleimani.”

  The cabinet secretary is astonished by Hayley’s news. “What’s your evidence?”

  “I can’t really divulge more right now, ma’am. But in regard to our earlier conversations, I can’t agree with you more. The president must not order a cyber response on Russia.”

  Clare says, “I’m not sure the president is in the position to order lunch. But the NSA director’s confidence that the Russians are responsible, backed by the full weight of that agency, is going to be difficult to dislodge, to say the least.” With a curt nod, the cabinet secretary continues out of the room.

  * * *

  HE LEARNED BY phone his son was dead. At the time, in 2014, Carlos Hernandez was serving as director of intelligence for the military’s Pacific Command, at Camp Smith in Hawaii. He and his wife had traveled to the mainland for a well-earned vacation on the Oregon coast. Having just teed off with his group—good friends he’d known for the entirety of his three decades in the military—Hernandez was sizing up his approach shot when one of the young guys from the pro shop at Bandon Dunes arrived on a golf cart with an urgent message. Hernandez and his pals had long maintained a tradition of no cell phones when golfing. He privately cursed the inconvenience as he rode back up the first fairway toward the clubhouse with the assistant pro.

  A contact in the White House was on the line. Hernandez received news of the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 before the wire services had it. A Buk ground-to-air missile brought down the plane, believed to have been fired by pro-Russian separatists. His only son, twenty-six-year-old Diego, was a passenger on the doomed jetliner, traveling to Kuala Lumpur on business. Now he was dead. The reality of it was almost too much to bear. His son’s body parts were strewn across the village of Hrabove in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, comingled with the remains of other passengers and the debris left by the crashed Boeing 777. The general hung up the phone. His first thought was for his wife and how the news of Diego’s violent death would utterly devastate her. His second thought was of revenge, the beginning of a decade-long obsession that has never abated.

  The Russians, of cours
e, denied all connection to the “accident.” Despite a meticulous international investigation, officials in Moscow relentlessly deflected blame. Rumors and conspiracy theories arose in the absence of admitted responsibility. The propaganda surrounding the incident was grotesque. Some Russian commentators suggested the bodies recovered from the crash site were already dead when they fell to the ground. As years of investigation and conjecture dragged on, almost all observers understood that the individuals responsible for the atrocity would never be held accountable. No matter how many details were uncovered and then dutifully conveyed to the family members of victims, the truth seemed increasingly difficult to frame.

  After a voluminous investigation, even the most casually interested parties learned the Buk missile was capable of traveling at three times the speed of sound and hitting a target as high as ninety thousand feet. A cursory examination of documents revealed that the missile carried a 9N314M-model warhead, with an explosive core containing preformed iron fragments. Guided by radar to its target, the missile passed above and to the right of the cockpit and exploded by means of a proximity fuse. In an instant, that side of the jetliner’s airframe was utterly destroyed. But few of the victims’ civilian loved ones could fully comprehend the destructive power when the missile’s core exploded. Eight hundred preformed iron fragments perforated the fuselage skin of the business class section, where Diego was seated. Carlos Hernandez has experienced combat in many different forms. He’s all too familiar with modern weaponry’s effect on a human body. That agonizing awareness is a burden the general must bear. He can see with his mind’s eye all too well the carnage inflicted on his son.

  Unit F6 occupies a corner suite on the top floor of the NSA headquarters at 9800 Savage Road. It is a far different working environment than April Wu’s windowless bunker in the basement of the same building. Looking more like the offices of a hedge fund than one of the nation’s signals intelligence laboratories, the unit is staffed by twenty-four civilians. Mostly men in their twenties and thirties, they represent the all-star team of the NSA’s cyber offensive effort. The unit leader, Alfred Updike, dressed in blue jeans, leather sandals, and a Massive Attack T-shirt, hits a button on the wall next to the door. A secure locking mechanism disengages, granting entry to the agency director, Carlos Hernandez.

  “Thanks for swinging by, General. Follow me?”

  Updike’s scruffy beard and slacker attire suggest aging surfer more than math PhD and systems engineering wiz. In his forties and father to six kids with the run of a rambling farmhouse in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, the F6 team leader is an unabashed financial donor to progressive causes and the antithesis of the NSA analyst stereotype. Hernandez accommodates these and other quirks because Updike is the best in the business. Among many skills in computer network operations and information systems security, the F6 unit leader is valued most for his ability to marshal the talents of the younger analysts under his direction. No mean task, managing the prodigious intellects and eccentric personalities of the young people in this room requires an equally intelligent and unconventional mind. Updike makes it all look easy. He has habitually delivered results.

  The two men stride across the room toward Updike’s work area.

  Hernandez is all business. “CYBERCOM rebuilt DoD nets and got us back online within forty minutes of the attack, but data loss is widespread. It’ll be months before the Pentagon can restore less critical directories from off-line archives.” Following closely on Updike’s heels, the general nearly trips over a sleeping mouse-gray Weimaraner.

  “For Christ’s sake!”

  Updike grins good-naturedly. “The kids love bringing their beasts. Whatever keeps ’em at their desk, right?” He crouches down to administer a vigorous caressing to the dog.

  Hernandez glances at the wall clock and sees it’s nearly nine p.m. “You mind, Alf?”

  “Of course. Sorry, boss.”

  They take a seat at a cluttered workstation. Updike indicates computer code on his huge monitor. Written in C++ programming language, it might as well be Sanskrit for all Hernandez knows.

  Updike says, “One of my guys found the worm in DoA network stacks thirty minutes ago. We pulled the very same program off a server belonging to one of the Kremlin’s proxy hackers-for-hire in Saint Petersburg just a month ago.” The unit leader pauses to grin mischievously. “Of course, they didn’t know we were ever there.”

  Hernandez’s eyes shimmer with excitement. “Where would you strike, Alf? Game the scenario for me.”

  Updike doesn’t have to ponder it longer than two seconds. “Turn off the lights at the Kremlin. Moscow TV goes dark. Combo of the two, maybe.”

  The Weimaraner comes over for a pat, which he fails to receive from the general. “Prep the exploit packets. National TV assets. We’ll lay off the Kremlin for now.” Hernandez stands, always on the go. “And they say I have a hard-on for Russia.”

  * * *

  WEDNESDAY, 10:05 P.M. Hayley leaves the White House complex through the Seventeenth Street gate. She looks forward to a slow, meditative walk home after an impossibly long day. But the stroll proves to be anything but leisurely. Cable news and other media outlets cover no other story except Cyber Jihad. With each successive cyberattack, the country experiences a ratcheting up of fear and anxiety. Panic buying swamps gas stations and grocery stores. Lines at ATMs stretch for blocks. The unusually warm, muggy weather is doing nothing to settle nerves. In the ten-minute walk home, Hayley sees numerous manifestations of the fear gripping the city. Though the damage inflicted on the infrastructure in Cyber Jihad’s first attacks has been almost immediately repaired in each instance, citizens in the nation’s capital are thoroughly terrified. Seven dead from the Stafford explosion and an additional fatality—the heart attack of a civilian employee at the Pentagon’s Microsoft-run server farm in Maryland—has only added to the growing terror. How much greater would the nation’s apprehension be if the president’s erratic behavior in the Situation Room is made public?

  She knows the president well enough to understand his impulse to call her out during the NSC meeting. Brooding on the incident as she walks, Hayley considers whether or not she should inform Andrew Wilde and decides against it. Despite the president’s worsening agitation, Hayley is now convinced the threat posed by Cyber Jihad is the graver one. The attacks are clearly escalating in severity. The pattern is unmistakable. If Hayley informs her deeper state superior about the president’s conduct in the Situation Room, she fears the organization will pull her off of April Wu’s mission to concentrate exclusively on Monroe. Aware this obfuscation is potentially dangerous, Hayley is nonetheless confident in her assessment. This isn’t the first time she has prioritized the greater of two evils.

  While stationed at Fort Hood, before her recruitment by Publius, she enrolled in classes at Central Texas College. Back home in Lincoln County, higher education wasn’t much of a consideration. The scruffy kids that comprised Hayley’s set viewed with suspicion so lofty an idea as college. Self-worth wasn’t part of the social fabric. Many of the enlisted soldiers in Hayley’s unit shared that same attitude. An unrecognized caste system prevented young people of similar socioeconomic backgrounds—whether raised in urban or rural areas of the country—to seek higher education.

  Soldier by day and college student by night, she had almost no free time. The majority of her classmates had never been out of the state and were overwhelmingly the product of overcrowded, low-quality public high schools. College-level calculus proved to be a challenge for almost every student in class except Hayley, who breezed through the course. Perhaps it was because of that proficiency the ringleaders of a cheating conspiracy didn’t approach her. As final exams approached, two male students broke into the professor’s ten-year-old Jeep Cherokee, rifled through his briefcase, and obtained a copy of the test. The plan was to steal something else of value to mask the true objective of the break-in. The thieves, however, discovered something inside the vehicle they could n
ot have anticipated.

  In the professor’s briefcase, they found Polaroid-style snapshots of nude children. Recovered from that jolt of discovery, the thieves pressed forward with their original plan. Using a smartphone, they took photos of the final calculus exam and—leaving the discovered child pornography undisturbed—locked up the car again without any sign of a break-in. The two thieves told other students involved in the cheating scheme about the child pornography they had found. A furious debate ensued. Many of them thought the best course of action was to file an anonymous tip with the police. Others argued that doing so would endanger their prospects. The administration would surely remove their professor from his duties. A different teacher would replace him, potentially with a new test. Or, worse, exposure of the child porn would also reveal the existence of the cheating scheme.

  One of the young women involved in the plot was Latetia Wilson, from a broken home and subject to her mother’s frequent rages. Throughout the year, she was particularly dependent on Hayley for friendship and emotional support. Now suffering from pangs of conscience, Latetia confessed all to her older friend and begged for guidance. Hayley pondered her fellow students’ predicament. Clearly, something had to be done to stop an obvious sex abuser. But, in alerting the authorities, she would potentially destroy the lives of more than a dozen of the young people in the class. Hayley needed only a few minutes of deliberation before reaching her decision.

  The administration offices were just closing for the day when Hayley strode in and demanded a meeting with the dean. A department secretary explained that an appointment was required. Hayley refused to be turned away. Marching past the secretary, she barged into the dean’s office and told her about the stash of child pornography in the professor’s car. The dean, naturally, wanted to know how Hayley had found the photographs. Without hesitation, the Fort Hood soldier took sole responsibility for the vehicle break-in. Though skeptical, the dean alerted campus security, who located the offensive materials in the professor’s car. Local police detectives searched his home that same night. They discovered a much larger cache of pornography there, along with the camera that captured many of the images. The authorities immediately placed the man under arrest.