Threat Vector

by Tom Clancy

  Kovalenko said, “Child pornography, Mr. Lipton, on one’s computer, certainly of the quantity and variety that was found on your personal computer, is something that will put you behind bars very quickly. And I do not know how things are in your country, but I would imagine an incarcerated former federal agent would have a difficult time in prison. Add to that”—he leaned forward toward Lipton menacingly—“and trust me, we will add to that, the knowledge of your specific crimes, and I should think prison life for you would be especially . . . brutal.”

  Lipton bit his lip while he looked out the windshield. His fingers began drumming on the steering wheel now. “I get it,” he said softly, a tone much different than his tone earlier in the conversation. Again he said, “I get it.”

  “Excellent. Now it’s time to put all pressure possible on your agent.”

  Lipton nodded, still not looking at the Russian in his passenger seat.

  “I’ll be checking in on you.”

  Another nod. Then, “Is that it?”

  Kovalenko opened the door and climbed out of the minivan.

  Lipton started the engine, then regarded Kovalenko before he closed the car door. With a shake of his head he muttered, “The goddamned Russians.”

  Kovalenko closed the door, and the Toyota backed out, then drove toward the exit ramp of the parking garage.

  “You fucking wish,” Valentin Kovalenko said softly as he watched the car’s taillights disappear.

  —

  Darren Lipton met Melanie Kraft at the Starbucks at King Street and Saint Asaph. She was rushed this morning; she was on a task force set up at the office of the Director of National Security to evaluate any security leaks that might have led the Prosper Street safe house to be compromised, and there was an eight-o’clock meeting that she could not be late for.

  But Lipton had been beyond insistent, so she told him she’d give him ten minutes before she caught the bus for work.

  She could tell immediately he was more stressed-out than usual. He wasn’t leering over her like he usually did. Instead, he was all business.

  “He dumped his phone,” Lipton said as soon as they sat down.

  This made Melanie nervous. Had Jack found the bug? “Really? He didn’t say anything to me.”

  “Did you tip him off? Did you say anything about the FBI locator?”

  “Are you kidding? Of course not. You think I can just confess this whole thing to him over a beer?”

  “Well, something made him get rid of it.”

  “Maybe he suspects,” Melanie said, her voice trailing off as she thought about how distant he had been to her all weekend. She’d called him to do something Saturday night, but he had not called her back. When she called the next morning he said he had not been feeling well, and had planned on taking a couple days off work. She offered to come over and take care of him, but he’d told her he just wanted to sleep it off.

  And now Lipton was telling her it was possible—likely, even—that Ryan had discovered the bug.

  She shouted at him, “That tracker was supposed to be impossible to detect!”

  Lipton put his hands up. “Hey, that’s what they told me. I don’t know. I’m not a tech.” He smiled a little. “I’m a people person.”

  Melanie stood up. “I did exactly what I was told to do. No one said anything about me getting burned in the bargain. You can tell Packard or I will tell him, I’m done with you guys.”

  “Then you and your dad will go to jail.”

  “You don’t have anything on my father. If you did he would have been arrested years ago. And if you don’t have anything on him, that means you don’t have anything on me.”

  “Sweetheart, it doesn’t matter, because we are the FBI, and we have the best polygraph technicians and equipment on planet earth, and we will take your little ass into a room and hook you up to that whoopee cushion, and we will ask you about Cairo. You will be the one that sends both you and your dad to prison.”

  Melanie turned away and stormed up King Street without another word.

  —

  It was called a hot seat. Trash and Cheese ran out onto the tarmac and stood below two Hornets that had just landed as the other Marine pilots climbed out and the refueling team gassed them up, leaving one engine on so that they would not have to refire all the aircraft systems. Then Trash and Cheese climbed aboard the jets, slid into the cockpits, still warm from the last pilots. They quickly strapped themselves in, hooked up communications lines and air hoses, started the second engine, and taxied back to the runway.

  Three days ago, when they first started their CAPs over the Taiwan Strait in ROC aircraft, there had been as many planes as there had been pilots. But the heavy use had taken a toll on the older C-model Hornets, and four of the aircraft had been taken off the flight line for maintenance, necessitating the hot seat.

  One more had been shot down; the young pilot had successfully ejected and was picked up by a Taiwanese patrol boat full of sailors shocked to scoop an American out of the water. Another jet slammed into debris after it shot down a Chinese J-5, and this pilot had to crash-land at an airport on the southern tip of the island.

  The pilot had survived but with serious injuries, and the word was his flying days were over.

  In the past three days the United States had suffered one real combat loss, and they had inflicted nine kills on the PLAAF. The ROC F-16s had lost eleven aircraft and six pilots, a painful toll for the small force but a small fraction of what it would have been if there hadn’t been two dozen American fliers in country doing everything in their power to keep the menacing Chinese at bay.

  Things were getting dicey at sea level as well. A Chinese anti-ship missile had sunk a Taiwanese cruiser. The PLA claimed to have done this only after the cruiser sank a Chinese diesel sub, but all signs indicated the sub had sunk itself while laying mines in the strait when one of the mines was improperly set and exploded against the submarine’s hull.

  There were more than one hundred fatalities on both sides in the two sinkings. This was still something less than open war, at this point anyway, but the losses of men and material were increasing by the day.

  Trash and Cheese were ordered to fly south this morning; storms were predicted, and the Chinese had not been sending up as many harassing flights in bad weather, but the two young Americans knew better than to assume they would have a quiet CAP.

  Cheese had recorded his second kill the day before. With Trash as his wingman supporting and watching his “six,” Cheese had fired a radar-guided AIM-120 AMRAAM missile that took down a J-5 attacking a flight of Taiwanese F-16s thirty miles to the north of Taipei.

  That meant the two Marines had four total combat kills, and Trash’s two gun kills of Super 10s were already becoming a source of legend around the Corps. That very few knew, even among the Marine Corps, that this squadron was here in Taiwan still flying against the Chinese was a bit annoying to the men, especially so to Cheese, who would not get to paint the record of the kill on his own aircraft when he returned to his base in Japan.

  Still, through the fear and the stress and the danger and the exhaustion, the two young American fighter pilots would not trade their predicaments with anyone else on earth. Flying, fighting, and protecting the innocent were all in their blood.

  Their Hornets took off from Hualien air base and flew south toward the strait, toward the storm.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Gavin Biery sat at his desk rubbing his tired eyes. He looked like a beaten man, which he was, and the feeling of loss and hopelessness manifested itself in his slumped shoulders and his hung head.

  Two of his top engineers were with him; they stood above him, and both men reached out. One patted him on the back, the other gave him an awkward hug. The men left the room without saying another word.

  How? How can thi
s be?

  He blew out a long hiss of air and picked up his phone. Pressed a button and shut his eyes as he waited for it to be answered.

  “Granger.”

  “Sam. It’s Biery. Got a second?”

  “You sound like someone died.”

  “Can I get a quick meeting with you, Gerry, and the Campus operators?”

  “Come up. I’ll get them together.”

  Gavin hung up, stood slowly, and left the office, flipping the light off as he left.

  —

  Biery addressed the assembled group with solemnity. “This morning one of my engineers came to me to tell me that after a random security check he detected an uptick in outbound network traffic. It began immediately after I returned from Hong Kong, and it did not follow a strict pattern, though each incident of increased activity lasted exactly two minutes and twenty seconds.”

  Biery’s announcement was met with a roomful of stares.

  He continued: “Our network is targeted with computer attacks tens of thousands of times a day. The vast, vast majority of these attacks are nothing, just stupid phishing schemes that are pervasive on the Internet. Ninety-eight percent of all the world’s e-mail activity is spam, and most of it is hacking attempts. Every network on earth is hit by these things all the time, and moderately competent security measures are sufficient to protect them. But in the midst of all this low-level stuff, our network has been singled out for very serious and smart cyberattacks. It’s gone on for a long time, and only by the admittedly draconian measures I’ve been using have we kept the bad guys outside the wire.”

  He sighed again, like a balloon deflating. “After I got back from Hong Kong, the low-level attacks continued, but the high-level attacks just stopped.

  “Unfortunately, this uptick in outbound transfer activity means there is something inside our network. Something has been set up to send out data, our data, our secure data.”

  Granger asked, “What does that tell us?”

  “They are inside. We have been compromised. We have been hacked. The network has a virus. I dug into a couple of locations, and I regret to say I have found the FastByte Twenty-two fingerprint on our network.”

  Hendley asked, “How did they do it?”

  Biery looked off into space. “There are four threat vectors. Four ways for a network to be compromised.”

  “What are the four?”

  “A remote threat, like a network attack over the Web, but that didn’t happen. I’m firewalled here, meaning there is no direct line to the Internet that someone can use to access the network.”

  Granger said, “Okay. What else?”

  “A proximate threat. Like someone hacking into a wireless network from close range. Again, we’re as bulletproofed as we can be against that.”

  “Okay,” said Chavez, urging Biery on.

  “The third threat vector is the insider threat. That would be someone here in the building, working for the enemy, compromising our system.” Biery shook his head. “I can’t believe anyone here would do that. My hiring and vetting process is as tough as I can possibly make it. Everyone in this building has worked in top-secret—”

  Hendley waved away the thought. “No. I don’t believe this was an inside job. What’s the fourth threat vector?”

  Biery said, “Supply chain.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Compromising hardware or software that then makes its way onto the network. But again, I have safeguards against that. We monitor everything that comes in, every peripheral connected to the system, every—”

  He stopped talking mid-sentence.

  “What is it?” asked Chavez.

  Biery stood quickly. “The German hard drive!”

  “What?”

  “Todd Wicks at Advantage Technology Solutions delivered a drive I ordered. I checked it out myself. It was legit. Clear of known viruses. But maybe there is something new. Something hidden in the master boot record that no one knows how to detect. I did not install it till I got back from HK, and that’s exactly when the virus began reporting back.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Biery sat back down. He put his elbows on the table and dropped his head in his hands. “Step one? Shoot the hostage.”

  “What?” Hendley exclaimed.

  “We call it shooting the hostage. They have my network. That is the advantage they hold on us. But I can shut it all down. The entire network. Just go dark. That removes their advantage. Kill everything.”

  Granger nodded. “Okay. Do it. Step two?”

  “Step two? You send me down to Richmond.”

  “What’s in Richmond?”

  “Todd Wicks. If his board had been compromised, he would know about it.”

  Hendley asked, “Are you sure he knew?”

  Gavin thought back to Todd’s visit to Hendley Associates. He seemed overly friendly, a little nervous, especially when he met Jack Junior.

  Biery said, “He knew.”

  Chavez stood up quickly. “I’ll drive.”

  —

  Todd Wicks watched his kids play on the swing set in the backyard. Even though it was only forty-five degrees, they were enjoying the last of the daylight outside, and he knew they would enjoy the hamburgers he was grilling up even more.

  Sherry was out here on the deck with him, talking on her phone with a client while she reclined on the chaise longue, bundled up in a polar fleece and ski pants but looking beautiful nonetheless.

  Todd was feeling good about the day, about his family, about his life.

  Through the constant din of the playing children, Wicks heard a new noise, and he looked up, away from the grilling burgers, and saw a black Ford Explorer pull up in his driveway. He didn’t recognize the vehicle. He flipped the four burgers on the grill quickly and called out to his wife.

  “Honey, are you expecting anybody?”

  She could not see the driveway from where she lay back on the chaise. She pulled the phone away from her ear. “No? Is someone here?”

  He did not answer, because now he saw Gavin Biery climbing out of the passenger side of the Explorer, and he did not know what to do.

  His knees went weak for a moment, but he fought his panic, put the spatula down, and took off his apron.

  “Couple of guys from work, babe. I’ll talk to them inside.”

  “Can I meet them?”

  “No,” he said, a little more forcefully than he would have liked, but he was worrying about what was going to happen.

  Deny, deny, deny, he told himself. You don’t know anything about a virus.

  He rushed off the deck and down to the driveway, catching Gavin and the Hispanic-looking man before they made it into the backyard. Play cool, he told himself over and over. He smiled widely. “Gavin? Hey, buddy. How’s it going?”

  Gavin Biery did not return the smile. The Hispanic guy stood stone-faced next to him. “Can we go inside and talk for a minute?”

  “Sure.” Good. Get them out of the damn driveway and into the house where Sherry can’t hear.

  A minute later they were in Wicks’s living room. All three men remained standing. Todd asked his guests to sit down, but neither man complied, so Todd just stood there nervously, looking hot and uncomfortable while telling himself over and over to be cool.

  “What’s this about?” he asked, and he thought he hit the right tone.

  Biery said, “You know what this is about. We found the virus on the drive.”

  “The what?”

  “‘The what?’ That’s the best you can do? C’mon, Todd. I remember how you just about shit your pants when I introduced you to Jack Ryan. What must have been going on in your mind at that moment?”

  Chavez stared Wicks down.

  �
�Who are you?” Wicks asked.

  The Hispanic man did not answer.

  Wicks looked at Biery. “Gavin, who the hell is—”

  Biery said, “I know the hard drive was infected with malware. In the master boot record.”

  “What are you talking—”

  Chavez spoke now: “Best you don’t lie. We can see right through you. And if you lie, I will hurt you.”

  Wicks’s face went even paler, and his hands began to shake. He said something, but his voice cracked, and Ding and Gavin looked at each other. Chavez said, “Speak up!”

  “I didn’t know what was on there.”

  “How did you know anything was on there?” asked Chavez.

  “It was the . . . the Chinese. Chinese intelligence.”

  Gavin asked, “They gave you the drive?”

  “Yes.” Todd started to cry.

  The Hispanic man rolled his eyes. “Are you fucking kidding?”

  Between sobs, Wicks asked, “Can we please sit down?”

  —

  Over the next ten minutes Todd told the two men everything. The girl in Shanghai, the entourage of cops, the detective who said he could help Todd stay out of jail, the agent in the pizza parlor in Richmond, and the hard drive.

  Chavez said, “So, you got taken by a dangle.”

  “A what?” asked Wicks.

  “It’s called a dangle. They dangled this girl, Bao, for you to go after, and then they caught you in a honey trap.”

  “Yes. I guess that’s about the size of it.”

  Chavez looked at Biery. The doughy computer geek looked like he wanted to kill Todd Wicks. The Hendley/Campus network was Gavin Biery’s great love, and this guy had slipped through the defenses and brought it down. Ding wondered if he would have to pull Gavin off the younger, fitter Wicks, who right now did not look like he would be able to defend himself from a house cat, much less a rage-filled computer geek.

  “What are you going to do to me?” Wicks asked.

  Chavez looked to the broken man. “Don’t ever say another word about this to anyone as long as you live. I doubt the Chinese will contact you again, but if they do, it might just be to kill you, so you might want to think about grabbing the family and running like hell.”