The audio switched from the quiet clarity of the studio anchor to the sound of someone speaking loudly over engine noise. The video showed a face wearing a headset and a baseball cap floating like the nose of a dirigible against a black background, dimly lit by the glow emitted by the cockpit controls nearby.
Roger that, Steve. Okay, we’re beginning to get close enough to see what’s going on.
The feed went into split-screen mode, continuing to show the traffic reporter on one side, while on the other, the camera swung away into the darkness. Off in the distance, a bright light illuminated the deck of a ship, indicating the presence of a helicopter hovering above. Obviously, time had run out to take the last ship the same way as the others, forcing the Navy to make an outright assault on the ship instead of a stealthy approach.
What the heck’s happening out there, Steve?
Dunno. I’m guessing it’s probably a drug shipment being interdicted. I’ve got binoculars here, so let me get a closer look. Okay. Okay, I can see better now—it looks like there’s a big SWAT team, or maybe a commando unit, advancing on deck towards the bridge in the stern of the vessel, supported by covering fire from a couple of Cobra helicopters. I’m going to see whether we can get a video close-up at such long range so you can see what I’m seeing.
He turned to the cameraman at his elbow and yelled in his ear.
The camera zoomed in, revealing the blurred images of dozens of men in military gear rushing toward the stern of the ship. Streaks of light were zooming in from the side, hammering into the bridge.
Holy cow! Will you look at that? That’s got to be an AC-130 gunship pouring fire in! Look at those tracers! This is no drug bust! I wonder what they’re after down there?
You better keep your distance, Steve. Whatever it is, we don’t want you getting hurt.
Roger that.
The traffic reporter turned to speak to the pilot and then faced the camera again.
Ron, we’re going to stay at this distance and keep the video going.
That sounds like a good move, Steve. I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this before.
Me neither. Whoa!
They heard a roar, as the traffic reporter ducked and looked up through the Plexiglas bubble enclosing the cockpit.
Looks like we’ve got more company here.
Who’s that?
I’m guessing a squadron of Super Hornets up from the Naval Air Station down near Barstow.
Really? What would they be there for?
More air support, obviously. But for what, I’ve no clue. They certainly aren’t going to want to fire at the ship, now that we’ve got personnel on board. This is getting stranger by the minute.
The video was now focusing on the boarding party as it crouched behind a hatch cover that spanned most of the width of the ship. The heavy, spent uranium bullets the gunship was firing were now rapidly destroying the deck-level doors on either side of the superstructure in the stern of the ship. When the gunship abruptly ceased firing, the attacking party jumped up and dashed for the doors.
Wait a minute! Something really weird is starting to happen! The traffic reporter grabbed the shoulder of the cameraman and pointed to his right.
The video swung around to the bow of the ship, which now had what looked like an enormous, gleaming capital letter H tipped on its side spread across its bow. As they watched, the center grew brighter and brighter.
What the heck is that, Steve?
Giant doors, Doug! These humongous, big doors are opening up in the bow of the ship! This is starting to look like a James Bond movie—like a cross between Dr. No and Moonraker!
That’s astonishing! What are the attackers doing about it?
I can’t tell. I wonder whether the boarding party even knows? The helicopters are still overhead, and the gunship is circling around the stern of the ship right now, so none of them can see what we’re seeing.
The video zoomed in for a closer look at the now fully open doors in the bow. Suddenly, the video washed out in a pulsating burst of light and fire and then began vibrating wildly, leaving the studio anchor alarmed.
What’s going on? Steve! Are you all right?
There was no response until the video feed settled back into focus.
Wow—sorry. That was a close one. Some kind of jet or rocket came blasting right out of the bow of the ship and came almost right at us! Let’s wheel around and see if we can get a look at it before it’s out of sight!
The cameraman leaned to the side and captured the rapidly diminishing silhouette of some sort of aircraft. They were watching it fade into the brightening sky, heading toward San Francisco, when out of nowhere, it was intercepted by a streak of light that caused it to dissolve into a gigantic fireball.
Well, that explains the Super Hornets—whatever that was, they just took it out with an air-to-air missile. I wonder where it was headed?
The traffic reporter’s face in the split screen turned to the side.
Uh-oh. Party’s over. I’m being told by the pilot we’d better get out of here.
The video turned away from the sunrise and back toward the ship. One of the helicopters was now headed in their direction.
Looks like they finally noticed us hanging around over here, or I guess more likely they just didn’t have time to do anything about it until now. We’re being ordered to leave the area immediately.
All right. Fly safely. Thanks for that fantastic coverage.
The view returned to the studio.
Well, there you have it. For those of you just tuning in, you’ve been watching exclusive live video from one of our traffic helicopters, approximately four miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge. We may have lost our on-scene video for the time being, but we’ve got a boat with another camera crew on its way out to sea to keep an eye on things from whatever distance they’re allowed to do so, so stay tuned for live coverage of this extraordinary event involving our military forces.
I’ve been joined now by telephone by local Silicon Valley technology reporter Roy Olsen to gain some early insight into what we’ve just been watching. Obviously, the military intervened just in time to protect the Homeland from an attack. But by whom? And what would the target have been? Roy, what’s your guess?
Shocked, Tim recognized the reporter’s name. He was the one trying to raise the alarm about data center vulnerability.
Well, I think the Caliphate has to be the first possibility to consider. Foobar has been promising a big attack against the West for months now, and his troops have been massing for days on the borders of Turkey and Egypt. An hour ago, they began pouring over those borders. I don’t think that both of these things happening at the same time can be a coincidence.
But if so, what would this ship’s mission have been?
There’s only one target that makes sense to me.
What’s that?
To take down our cyber infrastructure and keep it down.
How would they do that?
Simple. A ship that size could have been carrying dozens of drones, or whatever it was we just saw getting shot down. Let’s say it had fifty of them. That might be enough to take out a big percentage of the data centers that support most of the public and private computing power for all of California and the Southwest. Were you able to get through to the Center for Infrastructure Studies?
Yes. On the line we also have Norman Belloque, the lead author of a startling new report commissioned by the Responsible Technology Foundation that will be released later today. Mr. Belloque, from what I understand, your report describes what the impact of an attack on our data centers would be like. I’ve only had a chance to read the executive summary so far, but based on what I read there, we should all be very, very grateful that our military forces were able to thwart t
his attack before it could succeed.
“Looks like you’ve missed your flight,” Frank observed.
Tim jumped up. The waiting area was empty, and the door to the ramp was closed. He sat back down abruptly and stared straight ahead. “How did they find out about the last freighter?”
“I realized that we were only tracking one ship headed to San Francisco and there should have been two. Luckily, I was able to figure out the rest of the pieces just in time for the SEAL team to be able to mount back-to-back assaults on both ships.”
Tim’s face was a map of emotions wrestling with each other.
“I also realized something else. You want to know what?”
It appeared that Tim didn’t trust himself to speak. Finally, he nodded.
“Here.” Frank put a disposable phone in Tim’s hand. He stared down at it for a moment and then back to Frank in obvious confusion.
“That’s a disposable, and therefore non-traceable, phone I had leftover from the adventure I had eluding the FBI and the CIA. I used it to wake up that technology reporter who’s been trying to blow the whistle on vulnerable data centers, and he was able to get through to a San Francisco radio station with traffic helicopters. He told them to send one of their choppers out to sea immediately and have the author of the RTF report standing by for the discussion he’d want to have within a couple of hours.”
Tim’s eyes widened and brightened. Then he frowned. “That’s what you did—which is awesome. But you said you realized something. What was that?”
“Actually, several things. For starters, that averting big dangers can require big sacrifices, and also that if you’re not willing to make them, you can’t expect someone else to make them for you.”
Tim nodded. “I’d say you got that right. Except you were a lot smarter in the way you went about doing something than I was.” He handed the cell phone back to Frank. “You said ‘several’ things. Is that it?”
“The last one is that I’m pretty lucky that Marla met someone who could wise me up in time. Even if he can be an even bigger idiot sometimes than I am.”
Tim was still frowning but no longer in a bad way.
Frank clapped him on the shoulder and stood up. “C’mon. I think we could both use a cup of coffee.”
* * *
26
We Interrupt this Program…
It had been a day dominated by news and speculation. By midday, it was clear that the Caliphate forces were being destroyed on the ground by coalition forces. The press had piled on the news from San Francisco like jackals around a hamstrung wildebeest. There was no question now of scuttling the Dohna or sending it off to Guam, as a swarm of helicopters kept watch on the ship and the Coast Guard Cutter guarding it. Early in the afternoon, three tugboats and a pilot boat arrived on the scene. The pilot boat pulled alongside the Dohna and transferred what was presumably a new crew to the disabled ship. Soon, there was live footage of the Dohna being towed and nudged by the tugs into San Francisco Harbor, escorted by the cutter.
“Anybody home?”
“Yes, Marla. We’re both here,” Tim said.
“Great! How about we defrost a couple of pizzas and listen to the president’s address? It’s supposed to start in fifteen minutes.”
“We’re way ahead of you. We ordered the real thing a half hour ago.”
“I knew there was a reason I liked you. Give me two minutes and I’ll join you.”
When she did, they had the pre-speech warm-up broadcast cued up and ready to go.
Good evening, and welcome to this special broadcast on today’s extraordinary events, ending with a speech by the president that was announced just one hour ago. We begin our coverage with an update on the situation on the ground in the Middle East. Our chief foreign correspondent, Bill Henley, is broadcasting live from Ankara, Turkey. Bill, what can you tell us?
Thanks, Bruce. “Extraordinary” only begins to describe what we’ve seen here today. The action began in the early afternoon when Mullah Mohammed Foobar launched a disastrous, all-fronts Kamikaze-style attack. When the final tally is taken, it’s expected to show that the Caliphate suffered the largest one-day casualties of any force in any conflict since the Second World War.
The video switched to a succession of aerial shots of battle scenes across the Middle East. Everywhere the camera turned, there were burned-out vehicles, abandoned artillery pieces, and endless numbers of bodies.
As you can see, wherever the forces of the Caliphate advanced, they were annihilated. Unlike prior attacks, Caliphate forces advanced in concentrated units, as if they expected to meet no resistance whatsoever. This made them exceptionally vulnerable to attack from the air, resulting in enormous casualties almost immediately. When Foobar’s forces were confronted with overwhelming firepower, their discipline quickly broke, and they abandoned their weapons and scattered or surrendered.
Bill, most of these troops were poorly trained, isn’t that right?
That’s correct, Bruce. Most of the troops on the front lines were young men who had flocked to Foobar’s banner when he announced himself as the Mahdi. That wasn’t that long ago, and it doesn’t look like they’d made very good use of what training time they had. Foobar seems to have spread all his experienced forces across the new battalions of raw troops, so to the extent that any of them have survived, they’re now scattered across much of the Middle East.
So where did things stand by nightfall?
General Harvey Toffler told us at a briefing earlier this evening that Foobar’s ability to wage war has been effectively destroyed and that coalition forces are expected to retake all Caliphate-controlled territory without meaningful opposition.
Thank you, Bill. Stay safe.
You’re welcome, Bruce.
The video returned to the news studio.
But this was hardly the only extraordinary news we learned today. Stay tuned as we return to U.S. shores and report on a battle waged just off San Francisco, the true significance of which is only now just beginning to emerge after rampant speculation throughout the day.
Marla hit the pause button. “This all sounds too good to be true. Why would Foobar have thrown everything away like that?”
“From what I’ve heard, it’s linked to the next story,” Tim answered. “Let’s listen.”
Frank and Tim immediately recognized the footage and commentary playing now. They’d watched the same feed at the airport. After the anchor brought the story up to the minute, the camera angle widened to show that the network’s military expert had joined him.
Here to help us understand what we’ve just been looking at is retired Army Colonel Alec Gainer, our regular commentator on terrorism, and on the line we’ve got Sara Ravitz, the founder and executive director of the Responsible Technology Foundation, which commissioned a just-released report by the Center for Infrastructure Studies on data center vulnerabilities.
Alec, help us set the stage here. What, if anything, do today’s events in the Middle East and off San Francisco have to do with each other?
Well, Bruce, it could be everything or it could be nothing. A lot of people are saying that the targets of the ship that was seized off San Francisco today were the huge data centers that host most of the information and software for not just the high-tech companies in Silicon Valley but just about everything else as well—government, air traffic control, the San Francisco Stock Exchange, you name it. It’s extraordinary to think about, but from what we can tell from the footage we just saw, drones looking very much like German World War Two buzz bombs—that’s seventy-five-year-old technology—were about to shut down just about everything in the Southwest.
That’s incredible, Alec, but what does that have to do with the collapse of the Caliphate?
Right, Bruce. That’s where things start to get interesting.
Ever since the San Francisco events hit the air, social media has exploded with accounts of unexplained events offshore of Seattle, Los Angeles, Savannah, and Boston. Things like fishermen seeing Chinook helicopters for the first time in their lives over their home waters or a private plane pilot reporting an oil slick and wreckage to the Coast Guard without any sort of response on their part. Similar stories have been coming out of Denmark, Ireland, and Italy.
So what do you make of all that?
Well, the most interesting theory is that the Caliphate had a whole fleet of ships capable of taking out most of the data centers in the U.S. and Europe, and allied forces were successful in destroying all of them. If that hadn’t happened, our entire command and control capability would have been taken out, and Foobar’s forces would have walked all over us.
That’s quite a theory. What is the government saying about it?
No comment.
No, no, Alec. That’s not something we say.
No, Bruce—no comment is what everyone is saying—the Navy, the Coast Guard, the president’s spokesman, NATO, you name it. All we know at this point is that we’re going to hear from the president tonight on the Middle East and “other topics.”
Fascinating. Now let’s hear from Sara Ravitz. Sara, I hear you had quite an interesting day on the Hill this afternoon on what may be a related story. Can you tell us about that first?
Of course, Bruce. As it happens, there was a hearing scheduled for this afternoon on exactly the same topic. The House Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies Subcommittee wanted to know more about data center vulnerability before the president signs the Cloud Computing Cybersecurity Act into law. Under that bill, data centers could become larger and larger with almost no physical protection at all.
The Doodlebug War: a Tale of Fanatics and Romantics (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 3) Page 26