by Glen Robins
Lukas’s team went to the road in front of the small home where the bomb was reported to be, located the device, and removed it from the neighborhood. With the bomb safely ensconced in a blast containment receptacle, the convoy headed out to an unpopulated area several miles into the desert. Before they ever reached their destination, they found themselves under attack in a roadside ambush in a mountainous region ten miles outside of town.
During the firefight, Lukas was hit in the leg by shrapnel from one of the jeeps that exploded when an RPG hit it. The blast hurled him fifteen feet in the air and twenty-five feet away. He blacked out and awoke in a field hospital with his leg in a cast and elevated above his bed.
This injury, however, changed Lukas’s life more dramatically than just altering the way he walked. Within two hours of his regaining consciousness, a stern-faced man in a clean uniform appeared at Lukas’s bedside. He never introduced himself, never revealed his name. He just watched and listened and consulted with the doctors. Within twenty minutes of Lukas regaining awareness of his surroundings, everything went black again. When he awoke, Lukas was alone in a room with no windows. He was in a hospital bed, surrounded by the same beeping and whirring machinery, but with a new doctor and a new nurse who seemed to be singularly focused on him and his well-being.
Lukas thought this strange and asked the unnamed man about the change in his room.
“For all intents and purposes, you’re dead. The field hospital in Kandahar signed off on it and you were transported to this facility. You are receiving the best possible care. Your recovery is of the utmost importance to some folks in Washington who felt that it would be best if the rest of the world thought you were gone.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Lukas was still trying to regain his wits, which had been dulled by pain killers and, presumably, the trauma he had suffered.
“It makes perfect sense. You will be able to operate much more freely as a ghost.”
“A ‘ghost?’”
“Yeah, the dead among the living. You’ll assume a new identity for the record and will be—”
“You can’t do that. What about my parents? What about my friends?”
“They’ll be informed and, if you wish, invited to attend a funeral in your honor.”
“Funeral? Are you kidding me?”
“I don’t kid, soldier. I save lives. I protect my country and its interests. So do you. That’s what you signed up for.”
Chapter Eighteen
National Security Agency Headquarters—Fort Meade, Maryland
Eighteen Months After Graduation From MIT
Wearing a neoprene brace with titanium hinges on his left leg and using a cane to stabilize his gait, Lukas shuffled through the maze of cubicles on the third floor of the National Security Agency Headquarters. He had spent the past twenty minutes giving a status report. The cybercrime investigation unit he had been assigned to was on high alert after a malicious attack was detected against one of the Air Force’s central databases. Lukas and his team were called in to do the forensic analysis and find, if possible, the origin of the attack. After a quick lunch at his desk, he was ready to delve deep into the collected data.
Lukas spent the better part of the afternoon writing code that would identify patterns, then search for anomalies within the data. By early evening, his hastily constructed program began to isolate each of the anomalies and run tests to determine the effect of each. As his code parsed out the corrupted elements within the Air Force database, he developed another piece of code that would begin repairing the affected areas. His code was not sophisticated. Some may even call it rudimentary, but it was effective in curbing the data breach and locking out the malicious virus that had been planted deep within the file registry system. The beauty of his simple program was that it was virtually untraceable and undetectable.
At eleven o’clock—twenty-three hundred hours—he finished the task and could announce that the problem had been solved, at least for the time being. He lifted the receiver on his desk phone and hit autodial 1 to reach his boss’s cell phone. Lukas hesitated at first to call so late but remembered that the last thing Britton Stanley said to him on his way out was, “Call me as soon as you find something.” Lukas held him to his word.
“What is it?” Stanley said when he answered.
“Want the good news first, or the bad?”
“Bad news first. Always.”
“Roger that. These hackers have planted a particularly pernicious trojan deep within the Air Defense Command’s central data warehouse. It’s basically sitting there spying on all new submissions.”
“Such as?”
“As far as I can tell, they’ve managed to pick up several days’ worth of data entry, but the data seems to be limited to personnel files for newly commissioned officers. Things like names, dates of birth, rank, serial number, and addresses.”
“Is that part of the good news or the bad news?”
“Depends on how you look at it, sir. It’s bad news if you’re one of the ones whose data has been compromised. There’s a real possibility the trojan can infiltrate direct deposit accounts and syphon off funds, but there’s no evidence to suggest they have tampered with anyone’s money, at least not yet. It’s good news if you consider how much worse it could’ve been had we not caught it quickly.”
“How many records were effected?”
“Three thousand eight hundred and forty-two.”
“That’s still bad news, Mueller. Real bad.”
“Real bad? Why?”
“Depends on how you look at it, I guess, but it means you and your team are going to be busy making phone calls for however long it takes you to contact three thousand eight hundred and forty-two officers to inform them of what happened. Chances are, they’re going to have questions and will likely want some help resolving the issue.” Stanley sucked in a quick half breath for dramatic effect. “You guys are going to be busy.”
****
Three weeks after salvaging the personnel records of nearly four thousand Air Force officers, Lukas was called into the office of one Robert Hinckley, a major general and the second in command under the Deputy Director of the NSA’s Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations, which a few years later became part of Cyber Command, also known as CYBERCOM. Hinckley was a career man in his early fifties. His handsome face was augmented by a slew of ribbons and medals attached to the breast of his freshly pressed and wrinkle-free dress uniform. This man was several levels above Lukas’s boss. He had never met him, but all reports said the major general was sharp, professional, and forthright. Not one for joking around or light-hearted banter, Hinckley’s reputation as both tough and fair preceded Lukas’s arrival.
Hinckley hopped to his feet when Lukas entered his office.
“Welcome, Mr. Mueller. Thank you for coming on such short notice.” He held out a hand to offer Lukas a seat in front of his neatly organized desk.
Lukas nodded and half-smiled as he maneuvered himself into the nearest of the two upholstered chairs. No one had called him by his real name since Kandahar. He had gotten used to being called Mark Harris. His curiosity was piqued, and his eyes narrowed as he took in the officer across the desk. He sat on the edge of the seat and held his cane between his knees, not wanting to become too comfortable.
Hinckley, too, sat. A tight crease formed as he pursed his lips. “I’ll get right to the point, Mr. Mueller. I want you on my team. I’ve seen and heard of the excellent work you’ve done to date. The code you wrote in an afternoon to locate and isolate that virus a couple weeks ago was truly astounding. You are to be commended.” He nodded his head with an air of satisfaction and approval.
“Thank you, sir.”
“No, really. There will be a formal ceremony to commend you as soon as all the necessary forms are completed. But, that’s not what we’re here to discuss. Today, I want to invite you to take a position on my team. It’s a leadership role that carries responsibilities far gr
eater than your current role, but to which you seem more than adequately suited. I want you to head up a team that will search out and identify national security threats to our cyber infrastructure, specifically, our military intelligence apparatus.” He eyed Lukas for a reaction.
Lukas gave it to him in the form of widened eyes that conveyed genuine shock. “Uh, I … I don’t know what to say, sir.”
“Easy. Say you’ll take it and run with it.”
“I’m flattered, sir. I’ve only been here eighteen months. Seems like a lot of responsibility for such a newbie.”
Hinckley cracked a wry smile. “Listen, soldier, it’s not the age or the tenure that matters so much as the heart and the ability. You have both in spades, I’m told. The job is yours because you’ve got what it takes, not because you’ve managed to hang on to your job for X number of years.”
Scenes from the video recording of his mock funeral flooded Lukas’s mind. He remembered seeing the forced stoicism of his parents and the tears of his dear friends. Collin Cook and Rob Howell, the two friends that stood up for him on his first day of school in America and had helped him adjust and acclimate to life in a new country, consoled one another. Moving from Austria as an awkward twelve-year-old nerd/technophile had been rough, but certainly smoother thanks to those two. He loved them like brothers and felt a debt of gratitude he could never measure. The words they spoke at the service were touching and uplifting. Lukas knew they were genuine and appreciated the fact that Rob had managed to incorporate a healthy dose of humor during his six-minute tribute.
He had watched Emily Burns, Collin’s ex-girlfriend and the only person in their class at Huntington High to match his GPA and SAT scores, shed tears and sob uncontrollably. She had snuck in late, sat in the back, and left early, ostensibly to avoid having to interact with Rob and Collin. No one ever understood why she and Collin didn’t end up together, but they didn’t. A tragedy nearly as dark as Lukas’s untimely death.
Hinckley cleared his throat to pull Lukas’s attention back to the present. “You’re going to continue to operate with your assumed identity, so I will no longer refer to you as ‘Mr. Mueller.’” The wry smile made another brief appearance. “I did that so you know that I appreciate the sacrifices you’ve made for this great country.” Hinckley popped out of his seat and snapped a salute, signaling the end of their meeting. Hinckley held his hand to his forehead until Lukas managed to regain his feet. “This will give you the time and resources you need to hunt down Pho Nam Penh and his syndicate, known as the Komodos. He will be your number one target, though there will be others to monitor and track down, as well. You comfortable with that idea, Mr. Mueller?”
Lukas had no words, only a lump in his throat. His emotions were jumbled inside. He was excited and honored and sad at the same time. There was no one to share this great news with. No one he loved knew he was still alive and contributing to their safety and welfare. But his deep desire to bring Penh to justice and to stop him from carrying out his plan more than made up for it.
He stood, looked Hinckley in the eye, returned the salute, and replied, “More than you could ever know, sir. Thank you.”
Chapter Nineteen
National Security Agency Headquarters—Fort Meade, Maryland
Four Years After Graduation From MIT
Working through the night for the sixth time in two weeks, Lukas and his team were dropping countermeasures in place to thwart yet another in a string of increasingly malevolent attacks on government networks coming out of Southeast Asia. Each countermeasure they had cooked up during the past thirteen days had been met by a new strain of deleterious virus. Whoever it was on the other side of the world had built a sophisticated mutating form of multipartite virus that had worked its way deep into the program files of one of the Department of Defense’s largest contractors. This contractor designed and built weapons systems that were deployed by both ground-based mobile units as well as drones and fighter jets. Everything they made was cutting edge and lightyears ahead of the rest of the world.
The first attack came with just enough warning for the team to fortify the most sensitive information and executables within the contractor’s file system. While his team implemented their defense, Lukas went on the offensive by designing a string of code that essentially led the virus deeper and deeper into the database, showing it holes and glitches in the system that it could exploit. What the hackers who designed the virus didn’t know was that each of those loopholes and vulnerabilities had been programmed by Lukas and the decoy vulnerable files acted much like red blood cells in the human body.
The end result of Lukas’s code was analogous to a Venus flytrap that entices its victims to come in and take a look before closing in around them and consuming them. In a similar way, Lukas designed a set of instructions that baited the virus to the decoy files located where the target files were customarily stored. Once the virus had penetrated what it thought was the file containing the information its ill-willed programmers wanted to access, Lukas’s code became a carnivore of sorts, extracting data from its prey before destroying it. In this way, Lukas and his team were able to analyze the virus’s code and learn about its creator the way a coroner learns from dissecting someone who has deceased.
Over the previous two and a half years, Lukas and his team had created a log and tracked the patterns of these viruses. He was confident that they had originated from a mastermind whose ticks and habits and tendencies he had learned during his years at MIT. Part of the reason for his recognition was the fact that he had stayed true to Mahoney’s injunction to track and bring down his college-friend-turned-nemesis, Pho Nam Penh.
Penh had been sporadically active on the scene during the intervening years. His digital signal as it were had not manifest itself at first. Either that, or Lukas had not known where or how to look for him in the realms of cyber espionage. Now that he had caught the scent, Lukas was determined to hunt him down like a hungry predator.
When Penh’s syndicate of hackers wasn’t going after sensitive military data or clandestine operations files, they were making a handsome living at “penny skimming,” using sophisticated algorithms to steal the fractions of pennies generated each month from millions of interest-bearing accounts across the world. This illicit activity had gone virtually unnoticed for months, allowing Penh to amass hundreds of millions of dollars before he could be stopped.
With his ill-gotten gains, Penh had purchased legitimate companies and laundered his money through them, allowing his organization to self-fund once their criminal activities had been thwarted. One such company he formed and headed was the Pacific Casualty Insurance Company, an insurer that provided policies to protect other insurance companies. These policies were rarely used, but expensive. They provided “excess” coverage for the upper thresholds of the highest risk policies. If a standard insurer was comfortable assuming ten million dollars of risk, for example, but sold a policy with a twenty-million-dollar limit, Penh’s reinsurance company would provide the funds to cover anything above the tolerated risk at claim time. Hence, when the odd large claim was settled, Pacific Casualty’s payouts were enormous.
Once Lukas became aware of Penh’s involvement in the penny skimming scams, Penh and his business interests became permanent blips on his radar. He tracked every payout from Pacific Casualty and was horrified to discover an alarming pattern among the settlement recipients. They had an above-average propensity for tragedy.
The first case that caught Lukas’s attention was that of Mr. Joel Houghton. The man’s story was tragic on many levels. Joel was a construction worker in St. Paul, Minnesota, driving home from work on a Thursday afternoon when a large crane toppled over, pinning him in his truck for fifty-five minutes until rescue crews could extricate him and rush him to the hospital. Joel nearly died from the loss of blood. His leg had to be amputated, altering his life in every way possible. No longer able to do the work he loved or play on the recreation league hockey team he loved eve
n more, Joel slipped into a funk.
Fortunate for Joel, he hired a good lawyer. That lawyer fought long and hard and eventually won a large settlement from the company that owned and operated the crane that had ruined his existence. Unfortunately, the crane operator’s insurance company had an excess liability policy in place with Pacific Casualty, which ended up on the hook for six and a half million dollars.
Less than five months after receiving the payout, Joel Houghton invested five million dollars into a single premium deferred annuity. Ordinarily a sound investment, Joel was pleased when the first quarterly statement arrived in the mail and showed a handsome increase in his annuity’s principal. The second quarterly statement was equally as thrilling, as was the third.
When the year-end statement didn’t arrive, Joel worried but didn’t panic until it was time to prepare his tax return. The accountant asked for the annual statement, but Joel explained he had never received it. An inquiry was submitted. When no response was received, an investigation was launched, which uncovered the fact that the company that sold Joel his annuity had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. There was no trace of the company or of Joel’s five million dollars.
That was when Joel’s story became a Federal case. Because of the electronic signature of the investment, the company, and the customer communication, Lukas and his team were brought in to do a forensic analysis of the electronic money trail.
Joel’s was the first of several stories that Lukas investigated, all tied in one way or another either to Pacific Casualty or other shell companies which were in turn tied to one of Pho Nam Penh’s many aliases. Due to his experience with and bias against Penh, Lukas suspected his involvement from the start and worked hard to draw conclusions based on the evidence that would convict Penh of these devious acts. In the end, his suspicions were rewarded and a trail leading to Penh began to emerge.