Man of Honor

by Chris Malburg

  Li Yong addressed his young army of computer hackers. “In war, it is not the weapon you show but what stays in the holster that has maximum value. We have just proven both our capabilities and our benevolence,” Li Yong said. The shirt beneath his uniform tunic was wet and sticking to his back. He suddenly felt the urgent need to pee. But he had changed the program and saved the lives of thousands.

  * * *

  Chapter 23

  Jack didn’t mind taking the Washington DC Metrorail system. It was a convenient way to get around the congested capital. Then the jolt hit. It was sharp and unexpected. It knocked Jack to his knees. Pain shot through his shoulders as he slammed into the train’s support pole. The shock vibrated all the way down his arm that braced his fall. He grabbed the pole as the train lurched forward another few feet then stopped. His other arm shot out and wrapped around Helen’s waist to keep her from banging into the wall. “Gotcha, sweetie.”

  Helen braced herself and pressed deeper into Jack’s grasp. She stopped just a foot short of slamming into the wall.

  Jack felt her soft lips on his cheek. “Thanks, hon. You just saved me from a nasty bruise.”

  “Pleasure’s mine,” answered Jack. As long as I’m able to stand, he thought, nothing bad will ever happen to this amazing woman.

  “What the—” exclaimed Tom Gallagher as he staggered beside them from the sudden lurch.

  “The train behind us rear-ended this one,” Jack said.

  “Metrorail is preprogrammed to prevent rear-enders,” Gallagher said bracing himself against the seat back. “Only one way that could happen.”

  Jack looked around the car. No screaming or crying. But an awful lot of wide-open eyes in here. People seem more startled than anything else. Lips pressed together with worry. What’s that smell? Like burning steel-on-sand with hot motor oil thrown into the mix. The doors automatically slid open. Down there in the tunnel just outside the Judiciary Square Metro Station, the smell of the dirt and gravel used as ballast between the rails flooded into the car. Some people were still seated. Others had already picked themselves up off the floor. Bags and coats were strewn all over the car. Jack said into Gallagher’s ear, “Was this deliberate?”

  “You know they really should get rid of the taxis. Just go Uber all the way,” Gallagher said, adjusting his jacket.

  “How badly did you bump your head, pal?”

  “Why is it NTSB always has to find the cause of the crash and figure out the fix?”

  Jack stared into Gallagher’s eyes. “Follow me, Tom. Two airline crashes and now DC’s Metrorail trains rear-ending one another. All within six days. What’s next?”

  “At least, the car’s lights are still on,” Gallagher said. “Be even worse if we were down here in a dark tunnel miles from the station.”

  Jack shook his head and gently pushed Gallagher into his seat. Then he turned toward the passengers and shouted, “Everybody okay? Call out if you need help.”

  “Over here,” came the cry from an elderly lady and her husband. “My George bumped his head.”

  “Dazed is all. Really,” insisted the older man.

  “Who wouldn’t be,” said Helen. She kneeled next to him. “Let’s get you both out of here.”

  Jack grabbed the elderly man gently by the shoulders and lifted him onto his seat. Blood streamed from under his red and white Washington Nationals ball cap down the side of his face. Jack carefully lifted the cap. “Superficial scalp wound. I’ve had my share. They bleed like a son of a bitch but aren’t anything to worry about. A few stitches, and you’ll be good as new.”

  Then Jack called to the entire car, “Let’s get out of here before another train smashes into us. If you need help just ask the person nearest you.”

  And they did. Around the car, people picked up one another’s packages and bags that had been thrown around. They politely handed them back and forth until they all had their belongings. Others helped pick up the kids and elderly, dusted them off and made sure they were all okay.

  To Jack, it seemed just a minor crash. Was this linked to the other crashes?

  “Helen, Gallagher,” Jack said, “stand by the other two doors. I’ll take this one. Help the passengers out onto the rail bed. It’s just a short distance to the Judiciary Square station platform.”

  Hundreds streamed from the underground train station up onto the sidewalk. The street quickly filled with people. Traffic jerked to a stop.

  “Where to now?” Gallagher asked, his bearings back in place after bumping his head.

  “Where we were headed in the first place,” Jack said. “601 4th Street NW—FBI Washington Field Office. I want to see some friends at the Bureau.”

  “You think there’s a connection between these accidents, don’t you?” Helen said.

  “What are you doing here?” Smitty asked, releasing Jack from his bear hug.

  “Hi, hon,” Smitty said to Helen, giving her a gentler embrace.

  “Hopped the train from NTSB,” Jack said. He filled Smitty in on the Metrorail accident from a victim’s point of view. Jack looked around the tenth- floor elevator lobby. The décor had improved since he was Special Agent in Charge. The linoleum lobby floor was replaced with glacier-white marble. New forest green carpet spread out from here to the rest of the floor. Plusher than he remembered. Looks like a public accounting firm. But here, the people pack weapons and know how to use them.

  Smitty nodded. “First, America’s airlines are under attack. Now, you get nailed in a train. What’s going on, Jack?”

  “We have some ideas.” Jack noticed the people coming and going through the office. They walked with purposeful urgency. Few waited for an elevator, opting instead for the stairs. They seemed younger than Jack remembered—mid 20-s to mid 30’s. Might just be me, he thought. It had been five years since he left the FBI for private industry. Jack felt the familiar, no-nonsense efficiency. It was palpable—in the people, in the uncluttered desktops of their work areas. Even the air seemed electrically charged. “Meet Tom Gallagher, NTSB’s chief aircraft accident investigator.”

  The two men shook hands. “Jack, Helen, and I worked the first two aircraft crashes,” Gallagher said. “My team is also working the Hawaii jumbo jet disaster—”

  “Hell of a week for American transportation,” Smitty said. “Let’s talk in my office. You can fill me in on anything I don’t already know. Knowing you as I do, that’s probably substantial. This way.”

  He led them out of the elevator lobby, through the forest of cubicles arranged in pods. Jack noticed most were empty. As they should be, he thought. The agents who worked there should be out in the field catching bad guys. Even here, the desktops were pristine. No papers, books, notes. No clutter of any kind. Not even yellow post-it notes. And the computer screens at every unoccupied cubicle were all blank except for the FBI seal as a screen saver.

  “We take security even more seriously now,” said Smitty. “Visitors—even those escorted by our staff through the sanitized parts of the office—might catch a glimpse of ongoing investigations.”

  Smitty led the way through a long hall, then turned left. The carpet in the staff area gave way to hardwood floors with red and blue Persian throw rugs scattered throughout. Jack smelled the polish used to keep the floors shiny.

  “Right here,” said Smitty. He punched in a code using the keypad on the door jam then held the door open for them.

  Smitty’s office was bigger than that of any Special Agent in Charge Jack had ever seen. New furniture too. None of it looked like government issue―real executive level wood desk, conference table, upholstered chairs and a credenza.

  Smitty caught Jack admiring his office. “New administration. FBI got a budget bump. More agents, more computers, better training, and—” he held out his arm to encompass his office, “a message to the Special Agents in Charge of the field offices that they are valued members of management.”

  “You deserve it, buddy,” said Jack.

  “I
heard what happened with you and the President. Godfather or not, he threw you under the bus, Jack. Everybody knows it. The alpha males at the Bureau, CIA, and State are still fighting over which one of them takes second lead behind Homeland in finding whoever it is brought down those airplanes. To them, second isn’t as good as first position but it still gets them some notoriety if they collar the sons of bitches.”

  “Are they making any progress in their investigation?” Jack asked.

  “Hell no. At least, not yet. They’re figuring out the logistics of manpower allocation and channels of communication between all of them. They want to appear to be cooperating without actually sharing their intel assets and confidential informants. All of the agencies have ongoing cases they don’t want compromised. Or worse, risk giving away the credit for a bust.”

  Jack looked at his lifelong friend. He knew Smitty spoke the truth. He also knew that the President made the wrong decision in allowing a bureaucratic agency to take the lead in finding the terrorists who took down those planes and now the New York and DC trains. “This can’t wait. Go ahead, Tom. Tell Smitty your theory about what’s happening here.”

  “You’re right, Agent Smith,” Gallagher jumped right in. He explained the causes of the Elkhart crash and the airliner ditching into the ocean. “We’re still working on the Hawaii crash. That one’s got more moving parts. And now, all of a sudden, Air Traffic Control is losing planes and posting positions where there is no plane? Unlikely.”

  Smitty pulled a chair back from the conference table and sat down. The others followed his lead. He leaned back in his chair and picked up a half-full plastic water bottle already in place from an earlier meeting. “We know about the computer hacking. The whole intel community is wired into what’s been happening. What else?”

  Jack leaned over the tabletop closer to his friend. “Up until the Hawaiian accident, neither of the first two air crashes were mass casualty events. They could have been, but things, fortunately, worked in our favor. Hawaii was different. Had the radar computers just gone down, then it would have been a massive and expensive inconvenience. Embarrassing as hell for the FAA but no one probably would have died—”

  Helen broke in, “But then, the weather took hold and all those jumbo jets had to divert not once but twice, finally landing at Lanai.

  “But even that wouldn’t have caused the catastrophe that cost over 600 lives,” Gallagher said. “My team at NTSB is analyzing the cockpit voice recorders right now. Seems that the cause was confusion among the pilots, the control tower, and fog. We think those planes colliding on the runway were collateral damage from the main intent of the attack—taking control of Honolulu International’s ATC radar computers.”

  Jack saw Smitty’s eyes lock on his own, unwavering and now at full attention. The man slowly set down his water bottle. “So…what? You’re telling me that someone got control of all those computer systems?”

  “Worse,” said Jack. He stood and grabbed two water bottles from the polished mahogany sideboard and offered one to Helen. “They want us to know it. But their original intent was not to cause any mass casualties.”

  “See,” Helen said, “each was just a vivid demonstration of their ability to control.”

  Smitty pushed his chair away from the conference table. He opened the office door. “Hey, Crypto. How about joining us.” While they waited, Smitty told the group that Crypto serves as Homeland’s cyber crime and code breaking expert. “He was on temporary loan to the FBI for the last few months. Holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering from MIT and a master’s degree in criminology from John Jay.” The youngish looking man walked into Smitty’s office. He was in his early 30’s. His V-shaped physique and tanned face said he didn’t spend all of his time in an office in front of a computer.

  “Crypto, I want you in on this. My buddy, Jack, and his accomplices here share your opinion about these transport crashes. Only, they have actually been to the crash sites. Any of you geniuses want to guess who might be behind this takeover of America’s transportation system?”

  “It’s more than that,” Jack said. He appraised Crypto. Tall, fit, solidly built. A shock of red hair. Intelligent face. “The transportation system is just the tip of the iceberg. If we’re right, these people could already be inside other major infrastructure systems.”

  “Such as?” Smitty asked.

  “They’re already into air transport and trains,” Crypto said. He opened the tablet computer he was never without. Like Jack and the others, he cared most about stopping this before the next disaster.”

  Jack nodded, “A small team that can identify, assess, then take immediate, direct action. It’s the only way to handle this.”

  “Yes, sir,” Crypto said. He tapped on his tablet screen then held it up for them to see. “Think of your worst computer nightmare. Wall Street stock and bond trading operations is a good start. If those computers shut down—and certainly their back-ups by now are also controlled by the same people—then America’s entire financial infrastructure crashes.” He pointed to the computer diagram showing the flow of money running in green pipelines with dollar signs. The banks and Wall Street firms were connected like a spider’s web. That was bad enough. But it was just money. He moved on to the computers that control the pipelines and the flow of oil throughout the United States. If someone wanted to bring this country to its knees, energy seemed the place to attack.

  “Money and oil,” said Smitty, “still not life threatening. Bring them down and the US is massively inconvenienced—”

  “He’s right,” Gallagher interrupted. “The prize target for any terrorist group is where large numbers of people congregate. The transport system has millions using it every day. If these attacks continue, the luck we’ve had so far with no mass casualties—except for Hawaii and that really was an accident—won’t hold.”

  Helen shook her head. Her short black hair swirled. She stood up from the table and began pacing. “These accidents are just the opening salvo. They ultimately want to take over the financial and energy infrastructure.”

  “Shove America back on her heels,” Crypto said. “Then take over entire sections of the economy one sector at a time.”

  “Shitfuckpiss,” muttered Jack. It was the triple expletive he saved for the worst of the worst. Jack knew where they were headed. Energy. And not just oil. But the nat gas pipelines and the electrical grid too. If these people—whoever they are—can bring down an airliner and crash the country’s subways then they sure as hell can flip the switch that turns off the lights.

  The office was silent. Then, “So who’s responsible?” Jack asked.

  “It’s got to be state-sponsored terrorism,” Helen said. She listed off America’s enemies around the world beginning with the Iranians. Not far behind came the Afghanis, Pakistanis, and Saudi Arabians.

  Gallagher added North Korea to the list. Thought about it just for a second, then included Putin’s Russia too. Both countries have the resources and the technological capabilities to pull off something like this.

  Crypto stood from the table and joined Helen at the window. They both looked down at the street below, still clogged with people stranded by the MetroRail collisions. He added Japan to the group’s list of possibles. Though he put an asterisk beside them since Japan probably didn’t have the stones to attack the US. Whoever the attacker was had to be technologically sophisticated. That eliminated Afghanistan and Pakistan. He scratched the Saudis too since they are so dependent on the US for buying up their oil exports—a little over one million barrels a day. You don’t give a black eye to such a big customer. Crypto had quickly whittled down the list to Iran, North Korea, and Russia. “And don’t forget China,” he said.

  “I still rank Iran first,” Helen said, “then Russia, and then North Korea. Forget China. They own $1.3 trillion in US Treasury bonds.” Helen turned from the window and faced the others. “They’re not going to risk attacking their largest investment—”

  “
So whoever it is,” Jack interjected, “would need something enormous to gain from this risky aggression.”

  Crypto was quiet for a few seconds. Then, “Breaches of so many different systems takes a huge concentration of resources. Outside of a religious victory against the Great Satan, Iran gains little by attacking the US. And while Russia may not like the US, they’re not about to organize such a sophisticated strike. For what purpose?”

  “That leaves North Korea,” Jack said.

  “Yes, sir. And don’t forget China,” Crypto insisted.

  Smitty agreed with Helen. “China wouldn’t screw themselves by attacking the US. But North Korea—they’re crazy bastards. Their Dear Leader doesn’t give a shit. They have nothing to lose. If they try an attack and somehow succeed they get a seat at the world’s arms table. Maybe it’s a hollow victory. But it’s bragging rights for the Dear Leader.”

  The room went quiet. Then, “What does Homeland’s expert on international cyber threats think?” Jack asked.

  Crypto spun his computer tablet on one finger as if it were a basketball. “Logic says Iran and Russia were not part of this. And, despite the media’s reports, North Korea really doesn’t have the technological capability to mount such a series of computer-based attacks.”

  “From what my aircraft crash teams have seen,” Gallagher said, “the perp is an apex predator—top of the heap—when it comes to cyber crime.”

  “The biggest, great white shark in the cyber-sea is China,” Crypto said. “Xi BigBig is the oldest sitting president of the State Central Committee—their Politbureau. He’s got a heart problem—atrial fibrillation. He’s morbidly obese and has diabetes. Top that off with his lifelong habit of heavy smoking and the guy’s all but a dead man walking. May not last the year. The State Committee members are battling for his succession. The strongest contender is the Chairman of the Central Military Commission—”