Elevated Threat

by William Robson

  A full-court press was therefore put on by the administration to discount the Dubai assumptions. Expert after expert was rolled out to the press to explain how there was no firm evidence the onboard systems had been compromised by anyone. These experts claimed the engine room recordings only showed that the ballast had been catastrophically moved, which everyone agreed on, and that the instruments controlling the process were not working properly.

  The US engineering experts were also quick to point out that even if the pump control electronics were somehow compromised, the redundant backup systems would have taken over. Additionally, even the original engineering plans for the stabilizing system had a manual override control built into them. They also argued that since the system was systemically affected, a single intrusion point could not be to blame for the loss of control.

  The White House administration’s representatives repeatedly tried to make the argument that while the Dubai interest in claiming human intervention with the ship’s controls was simply about saving themselves money, US intentions were solely based on getting to the truth.

  Without any definitive smoking gun for either side, and with no terrorist group yet taking claim for the sinking, the continuous arguments on the news shows for both sides of the coin went on unabated. Polls asking the US public what they thought happened were split down the middle with 40% saying it was poor design, and the UAE better pay up, 39% saying it was terrorism; plain and simple, and 21% saying they were pissed off that American Idol was preempted to show the speeches.

  Within our political parties, the Republicans claimed that if we hadn’t overregulated the cruise industry, they could spend more of their money designing better operation’s systems. The Democrats said if we had regulated them more, we could have had some oversight and made them fix the systems so they would not fail. The opinions amongst the voters was staying pretty much along party lines. The death of 7,000 Americans had become little more than a financial and political football.

  When the Maurou crew communications prior to its sinking were finally released to the public under intense pressure by CBS lawyers, and that pesky Freedom of Information Act, the political sands began to shift. There was nothing said in the crew recordings that shed any light on the cause of the sinking, but the very effort the administration had gone through to keep the ship’s communications classified in the first place made them appear like they had something to hide. The impression they gave that they were withholding facts from the public became even more fodder for the conspiracists and bloggers alike.

  Watching all the politicians spar for camera time and the lawyers fighting over the carcass trying to extract money was certainly great theater for the masses and the news shows, but it made Agent Scholes sick to his stomach. As bad as the sinking of the Maurou was, he was one of the few people in the country who knew there was more danger just around the corner and that he had better get some answers fast.

  MOVING TARGET

  Name: Dr. Fahad Quadri

  Age: 53

  Nationality: Afghani

  Education: Kabul Medical Institute. Specialized in Curative Medicine.

  Professional History: Entire career was served at the Afghan Ministry of Public Health. Fired in May 2013 for insubordination stemming from refusal to perform surgery on Afghan military patients.

  Family history: Descended from SAFI tribe. Father (Behnam) and Grandfather both killed in rebel activities. Mother (Delbar) Unknown

  Current whereabouts: Unknown

  Current watch-list status: Yellow

  May 6, 2015

  Miami, Florida

  While the administration did its best to convince the world that there were no terrorist links to the Maurou, Agent Jim Scholes never had a doubt about it. His job was not to decipher the political implications, but to find the perpetrators. His team was working around the clock to do just that.

  When Agent Scholes and his team investigated the various lists available of known terrorists and terrorist organizations, he could not find any correlation between them and the mysterious man in the Panama hat. What this mysterious man was able to pull off, however, told Agent Scholes volumes about this individual. Clearly this person was not in the same intellectual space that most of the people on the CIA’s watch-list were. Even more troubling, was that Agent Scholes knew that John Walker could not have pulled off a complicated mission of this size without significant help from numerous equally capable cohorts. That thought sent chills down his spine.

  The fact that no terrorist group had taken responsibility, even among themselves for sinking the Maurou, was driving Agent Scholes nuts. That type of behavior from all the usual subjects just wasn’t the way it worked. The only inference he could draw from that lack of braggadocio and the skill set that was demonstrated by the manipulation of the Maurou’s engineering systems was that a completely new type of terrorist organization had been born, one that did not go by any of the established rules. That thought made Jim nervous, as he knew it would make it much harder to find them.

  One minor breakthrough for the investigators happened when one of the CIA forward teams on Castaway Cay had discovered that an unknown man vaguely matching John Walker’s picture had been seen in a local bar the day after the sinking. This man had not been seen by any locals prior to that day and had not been seen there since. Agent Scholes was confident that man was indeed Mr. Walker. He also knew that if he didn’t catch him, the attack on the Maurou would be repeated. Agent Scholes was more than aware that his new adversary had the skill, accomplices, money, and the vast advantage of anonymity on his side. His only real clue to try and get ahead of the game was to discover what was hidden in the emails he coerced the Maurou to send.

  It ended up taking three days before Agent Michaels’ team had found the answer to Agent Scholes’ directive to find out why only 14 ships in the Maurou’s address book had been emailed from the Maurou before it sank. From the disheveled look of Agent Michaels, it was obvious he had not left his office for those three days.

  Despite the delay, Agent Michaels returned to Agent Scholes’ office satisfied he had the answers.

  “Sir, I think we have finally found the connection between the 14 ships emailed from the Maurou. First, we broke down all the ships into twenty-seven various components and divided them among the four ship types. Then, we broke down each type of …”

  “Whoa, Bob! how about you just tell me what you found, not about everything you did the last three days. I get the idea you have been working hard. Just give me the money shot.”

  “Yes, sir. Well, although each of the fourteen ships had many dissimilar attributes, we were able to discover one that was inclusive to every one of them. All of the 14 ships are currently using the same operating system software for their navigational system, and as of today they are even using the same updated version of it. It wasn’t obvious to us at first as some of the newer ships had this version of navigational software installed as original equipment and others did not. However, we have been able to ascertain that those ships that were commissioned without the newer version of software have all been upgraded to it within the last few months.

  The hardware platform that this software runs on is used in thousands of ships this size and is sourced through a company in North Carolina. The software is called Navstar-1 and the particular version upgrade is version 1.1001. And here is the kicker: this software is sourced from an Indian company named IE-Sourcing, which is located in Uttar Pradesh in northern India”

  Agent Scholes was liking what he was hearing. Agent Michaels had even more good news to share.

  “We have investigated the company’s history and discovered that it has a somewhat arms-length relationship to several other suspicious companies in Kashmir. They in turn have a somewhat questionable relationship to the Pakistani government. We looked into every employee we could get information on that works at IE-Sourcing. They are all Muslims.”

  Agent Scholes squinted his eyes.r />
  “Bob, you do realize about 160 million people who live in India are Muslim, right?”

  “Well, sure... but …”

  Agent Scholes wasn’t sure if Agent Michaels understood that he was laughing along with him, and not at him, so he tried to put him at ease.

  “Never mind, Bob. This is good work. Given how they manipulated the systems on the Maurou, this would be exactly the kind of target they would go for. Please, send your team home and thank them for me. You may have just cracked the nut that will help us prevent another attack.”

  Bob’s relief and pride were on full display.

  “Hey, boss. I almost forgot one other important commonality that we discovered about the ships. Two of the 14 ships announced in the last week that they are changing their origination points for all their Caribbean trips. That means starting in June, all 14 of the ships will now be sailing out of the Port of New York.”

  In the annals of time, there is a first time for everything. Agent Scholes actually gave Agent Michaels a high-five. For the first time it looked like the cat had a clue as to where the mouse would strike next. Agent Michaels let out a silent “yahoo” with a double-fist punch in the air when Agent Scholes’ office door was safely closed behind him. He couldn’t wait to tell his team their work may have found a critical key in the effort to catch the bad guys. Those fleeting seconds of intense satisfaction are what makes everyone at the CIA put in the excruciating effort they do.

  With the good news from Agent Michaels fresh in his mind, Agent Scholes immediately returned to his laptop. The instructions he sent to the software experts on his investigative team were simple: learn everything there is to know about the Navstar-1.1001 version of software, understand exactly how it works, find out what the changes in the last release were, and experiment to see how it could be corrupted from an outside source to bring harm to the ships. His instructions to the crypto-team were equally straight forward: find out exactly what was in that email and determine how it could be used to affect the Navstar-1.1001.

  With the action items for his teams underway, Agent Scholes started writing a situational report to his superiors. For the first time he was filling out a report with confidence that real progress had been made. With today’s new intelligence, the full weight of the FBI’s anti-terrorism units could now be unleashed on the Port of New York and those 14 ships. While they were hard at work securing the ships, his CIA boys would be digging into the company that produced the Navstar-1.1001 and their employees. With the two agencies hot on the trail with a solid lead, the noose was closing in on the bad guys behind it all.

  Within the next 48 hours, everyone who had ever touched the Navstar-1.1001 navigation system software had been interrogated at least once. A list of seven engineers recommended for a re-interview, along with their backgrounds and associates, had been sent back to Agent Scholes. Downtown in the computer labs, a team of techies was feverously training on the Navstar-1.1001.

  Agent Scholes had orders to meet with the upper echelon at Langley to share his findings. He was hoping he could convince them to allow him to join the team in India to investigate IE-Sourcing. Agent Scholes was convinced the key to the puzzle would be found there. He felt sure they were now closing in on the mysterious stranger in the Panamanian hat.

  May 8, 2015

  Miami, Florida

  The Jupiter Group hadn’t become the number one cruise line supplier in south Florida for nothing. By supplying a full line of services to their clients which included hotelier, catering, gallery engineering, and even food and dockside security services, they had quickly become the class of the industry. The Jupiter Group was now supplying no fewer than 60% of all the cruise ship business that sailed from southern Florida with their services. The Jupiter Group’s main specialty was in retrofitting older cruise ships with modern food service equipment.

  When the big fish of the cruise line business went around swallowing up smaller cruise operators, the Jupiter Group found it to be far more cost-effective to retrofit certain key areas of the ships they acquired with modern conveniences and equipment than it was to build out a new ship from scratch. The highest demand for these retrofit updates was in the food service, restaurant, and galley service areas. Cruising was all about keeping customers’ tummies full.

  In order to keep the bellies satisfied, cruise ships require facilities that can process, cook, and serve vast quantities of food. If they are going to keep the customer’s coming back, the food they produce must be closer to five-star cuisine than Vegas buffet. At least that was the thinking behind the 18 million dollar check the new owners of the Deep Sea had written to the Jupiter group to do a full galley retrofit on the ship. Before the first shrimp scampi was broiled, the Deep Sea’s new owners were seeing lots of red ink.

  The statistics for the Deep Sea certainly would not scare any of the big operators. At a displacement of only 74,000 tons and a passenger capacity of just under 2,000, it wasn’t going to be pushing around any of the Oasis class boys. But the ship did have a nice layout of cabins and its eleven well-designed decks and spacious rooms had kept the old girl a fan favorite since its launch in 1995. Despite that, its lack of modern amenities had caused a slide in passenger bookings over the last few years. HPC Vacations, the new owners of the Deep Sea, believed there was still many years left in the old girl. Their open checkbook was bearing testament to that.

  The new owners were well aware that all the new amenities in the world would only go so far without a world-class chef to manage it all. Alberto Alfonso DaSilva would be just the chef they needed. The size of the check they had to write to cranky old “Albert” to join the ships staff made even their deep pockets pucker. But, at the end of the day, there he was barking out instructions to his newly hired underlings in the walk-in vegetable crisper. Just another amenity made available by the Jupiter Group’s design team.

  Chef Alberto would only work with fresh, crisp vegetables. He loved to say, two things that should always be fresh are women and veggies. His new custom-designed vegetable processor supplied by the Jupiter Group’s engineering team, made even the obsessed chef weep. The crisper was the size of a small apartment. It was constructed out of stainless steel on every surface, and it was a marvel of food production.

  Carrots could be unloaded from their crates in the refrigerated storage rooms and they would be cleaned by an automated high-pressure cleaning system. The newly showered carrots would then be dunked into a brine tank to kill off any bacteria, be pressure washed again, and for the coup-de-grace, be flash frozen at any selected temperature to provide just the desired crispness the chef desired. Tons of vegetables could be produced daily with one tenth of the previous effort required. Judging by the looks on the food tasters’ faces, the new vegetable processor provided twice the flavor as well.

  While not all the new contraptions designed by the Jupiter Group for the Deep Sea had the chef as confident for a culinary success on his first sailing as the vegetable processor, he was as satisfied as a head chef on his maiden voyage could be.

  May 13, 2015

  The sinking of the Maurou, only twelve days prior to the initial sailing of the Deep Sea certainly had an effect on the number of passengers willing to risk a cruise. When the Deep Sea pulled away from Miami on its first voyage following its 200 million dollar retrofit, the sales staff were not able to fill all the available staterooms, despite the expensive advertising blitz they ran. Still, at over 75% occupancy, the decks were lined shoulder to shoulder with people watching Miami disappear, and the owners had much to smile about. Two of the passengers on the ship’s maiden voyage were not to be found on the deck joining in the revelry. These two passengers had much to prepare inside their adjoining staterooms before the Deep Sea reached its first, and only, destination in Grand Bahama Island. They did not have time to join in the merriment.

  When those two passengers, a Dr. Hotak and a Mr. Arnold, went to the purser’s office to retrieve several large and very expensive su
itcases they had requested be stored onboard two days before the sailing, instead being delivered directly to their rooms, the bell staff thought it was a bit odd. Not only did the timing seem strange, the fact that two single men would have so much luggage for a three-day cruise made the bell captain cast a curious glance their way. But when each man gave each luggage handler a very sizable tip, and promised them to double it if the staff would deliver everything to the good doctor’s room “very carefully,” there were plenty of takers for the work. To each his own.

  Chef Alberto only had two opportunities on this short trip to impress the passengers on his maiden cruise. At the end of the first day at sea, the Deep Sea would be docked at Grand Bahama Island and that night’s dinner would be his coming out party. Chef Alberto planned a sophisticated meal with very high quality ingredients, but one that would be a scaled down version of the presentation of his grand vision. On the first night, his meal would please the palette, but the chef would save the real fireworks for the next evening.

  The ship would be spending the next full day at Grand Bahama Island. The passengers would be spending that day enjoying the island watersports, beachcombing, or just spending the day out in the town shopping. By the time the sun would set and the guests returned to the ship, they would be tired, hungry, and looking forward to celebrating their last night at sea. The presentation that Chef Alberto and his crew would prepare for that night would be the one all the passengers would remember after they arrived back in Miami. The chef needed to have everything perfect if he was going to get his patrons to tell their friends about his delicious and never-ending courses of delight.

  It’s amazing how simple it is for a curious person to find out about anything on the internet these days. For instance, if someone wants to discover the latest trends in cruise ship food service, Google easily comes to the rescue. In fact, with a little know-how, someone could even research patent applications for vegetable briners and learn in a few clicks exactly how they work. Pictures and diagrams would be provided that would show how they are built, how they get loaded, how they recycle the water, and even what is done with the waste water. Coupled with a short walk through a ship’s galley, a curious person could easily fill in the remaining information gaps.