METEOR STORM

by David Capps

  “Your honor,” Kravitz said as he jumped to his feet. “I have reason to believe that this information presented as coming from NASA is actually the creation of a Carl Palminteri, a known terrorist who is currently wanted by the FBI. This is more evidence of the defendant’s connection to anti-government forces seeking to interfere with the proper functioning of the United States Government. These people are dangerous and need to be stopped.”

  The judge turned to Charles.

  “Your honor, I have no idea who this Carl Palminteri person is or where he may or may not be, if he even exists at all.”

  I glanced at Tia. She was looking at me, smiling. I smiled back.

  The judge looked through the documents again as we all waited. “Mr. Kravitz?” the judge said looking over at him. “Does the plaintiff wish to provide certified copies to demonstrate the false nature of this evidence?”

  “No, your honor,” Kravitz replied. “As I said, these so-called documents are a complete fabrication. There are no actual documents that can be produced. None of this actually exists.”

  The judge looked back at Charles.

  “Your honor, the documents speak for themselves.”

  The judge looked back at Kravitz. “Mr. Kravitz, I have been sitting on this federal bench for the last eighteen years. In that time I have examined hundreds of thousands of federal documents. I have seen my share of fraudulent documents, as well. In my estimation these documents look legit. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?”

  “Your honor,” Kravitz said, “again, in the opinion of the United States there are no original documents and if there were, they would fall under the protection of the National Security Act, and as such would not be made available.”

  “I see,” the judge said as he looked back at Charles.

  “Your honor, national security deals with information that applies to the secrets this country holds private from other countries and in most cases from its own citizens. None of the information in your hands rises to that level of scrutiny. All of the information involved in this suit concerns the approach of a natural disaster with devastating consequences for the people of this country and the rest of the world. If a category five hurricane is headed for Florida, the United States has no authority to keep it secret. Indeed, the United States has the obligation to inform every citizen of Florida as to the extent of the storm and the expected damage and preparations that need to be made. That obligation has always been, and will continue to be, imperative. This disaster is no different. The United States Government has a moral and ethical obligation to disclose what is coming, if for no other reason than to give people time to prepare.”

  “Mr. Kravitz,” the judge said, “Anything further?”

  “Your honor, you have in your hands all the proof you need of the defendants willingness to commit the act of fraud against not only the people of the United States, but this very court as well. This behavior on the part of the defendant cannot be tolerated. The United States agrees that if there was such a disaster approaching, the government would have an obligation to disclose it to the public, and would promptly do so. But, as I have said, there is no meteor cloud and there is no threat. This whole thing is a fabrication on the part of the Survivalist Network to panic people and defraud them of their money. I therefore move this court to make the TRO permanent and allow this suit to proceed to trial.”

  “Mr. Harrington, anything further?” the judge said.

  “Your honor, it is perfectly clear that the plaintiff has filed this suit for the sole purpose of silencing my client’s First Amendment right to free speech. None of the information involved rises to the level of scrutiny required for National Security protection. This is a natural disaster and the information needs to be disseminated to the public. If the United States Government does not see fit to do so, then my client has every right to bring this information directly to the people.

  “The plaintiff has abused the power of this court and the legal process in an attempt to deprive my client of his constitutionally protected rights of free press and free speech. You have the truth in your hands. We move this court to dismiss the TRO and the suit against my client, and we also ask for sanctions against the plaintiff. In order to prevent the plaintiff from engaging in this abusive behavior in the future, we request that the plaintiff be required to supply certified documents and sworn statements before any additional TROs or suits be allowed to be filed against my client.”

  “Okay,” the judge said, “Ordinarily I would take this amount of evidence under advisement and issue my ruling later in the week. However,” the judge looked directly at John, “based on the nature of the evidence presented, I realize time is of the essence. The TRO is dismissed as is the associated suit. I am moved by Mr. Harrington’s argument, and find cause to grant the sanctions he has requested. Mr. Kravitz you may refile suit and requests in this matter only if you provide certified documents and sworn statements supporting your claims. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, your honor,” Kravitz replied.

  “We are adjourned.” The judge got up and walked back into his chambers.

  “Okay,” Charles said to John, “the judge believes the evidence we presented today. It’s very unusual for the court to approve sanctions like this, so this is a major victory. You’re protected under free speech and freedom of the press. Start spreading the word.”

  John opened his cell phone and punched in a number.

  “We’re good to go,” he said. “Put everything back online.”

  * * *

  Once we arrived back at the cabin, John brought Tia and me into the kitchen.

  “We won a battle today, but the war continues. We are going to need a bulletproof firewall for our website. Can the two of you work together and get that done for me?” John asked.

  “How soon do you need it?” I asked.

  “Yesterday,” John replied.

  “No, I’m serious,” I said.

  “So am I,” John replied. “Now that the lawsuit has failed to silence us, the cyber-attacks will begin, probably today.”

  “How extensive do you want this firewall to be?” I asked.

  “Let’s start with single wall, built so we can expand to double and eventually triple wall, with reverse trackers and Trojans from the beginning,” John said. “It has to be different from what you’ve done in the past because they are already familiar with that.”

  Tia turned to me. “What’s he talking about, done in the past?”

  I looked back at her. “I’ll have to explain later,” I said, “It’s a long story.”

  “A triple firewall?” Tia exclaimed. “That’s what they use at the Pentagon. What is it you know about their firewall?”

  “More than I’m comfortable with,” I replied.

  “Comfortable with?” she said loudly. “Come on, Carl, you can’t leave it at that. Tell me!”

  “Later,” I said firmly. “I promise, I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Damn right you will!” she said with that fierce look on her face.

  I turned back to John. “I’ve got a few ideas I’ve wanted to try.”

  “Excellent,” John said. “Let me know as soon as it’s ready.”

  * * *

  Tia and I settled back into the computer stations in the communications room again. I started to map out what I wanted in the firewall, while Tia started to program the reverse trackers and Trojans. As we completed a section of code, we ran it through the compiler and corrected the errors it pointed out. Then we set it up in an emulator program where we could actually try the software out in near real world conditions. That uncovered issues we hadn’t seen before, so the source code was modified again, recompiled and run back through the emulator.

  We broke for a quick lunch and later for dinner. The work was both exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. Around two in the morning, I noticed Tia had fallen asleep. I let her rest while I worked on. At four, my brain froze up and I had to
stop. I stretched out on the floor and quickly fell asleep.

  Tia woke me at a little after six in the morning. We went upstairs for quick showers and breakfast, then back to work. At seven, the phone at the communications officer’s desk started to ring. Alex wasn’t in yet so I went over and answered it.

  “Hello?” There was a pause. “Carl?”

  “Yeah.” It was John.

  “Where’s Alex, my communications officer?” he asked, as the padded door to the communications room opened.

  “He’s here,” I said as Alex walked in, “in the bathroom I think.”

  “That’s okay,” John said. “You’re the one I need to talk to. Where are we on the firewall?”

  “Making good progress,” I said, “we should be able to start beta testing some time tonight.”

  “How about this afternoon?” John asked.

  “Maybe,” I replied, “with a lot of luck.”

  “We’re under serious cyber-attack and we have no idea where it is coming from or how to stop it. At the rate things are going, we will lose the website sometime this afternoon. We’re currently at forty percent functionality. I’ve got thirty computer techs here and they can’t keep up with the degradation of service. As soon as we fix one thing, two more things go down. We need that new firewall.”

  “I’m on it,” I said. “As soon as we get close, I’ll give you a call.”

  “Good,” John said. “I’ve arranged for a helicopter to fly you and Tia to the media center as soon as it’s done, so give me a half an hour notice to get the chopper to you. We’ll need the program on CDs to load it onto the servers.”

  “Will do,” I said. John hung up. I looked at the phone and replaced it in the receiver. Alex stood in the doorway.

  “Thanks for covering for me,” he said. “Family issues.”

  “No sweat,” I replied.

  Tia and I went back to work on the new firewall. At a little past noon, Alex brought sandwiches and coffee down from the kitchen.

  “I thought the rule was no food in the room.” I said as he placed our lunch on a desk next to us.

  “That’s the rule all right,” he said. “Anything else I can get for you?”

  Tia and I laughed. “We’re good, thanks,” Tia said.

  Just before four, I had Alex call John to send the helicopter. We ran one last test through the emulator, made a few small corrections, recompiled and linked everything into a final executable file. We heard the helicopter blades above us as we made the fourth copy on a CD.

  * * *

  John had a large section of the parking lot of the media center cleared so the helicopter could land. We ducked down as we ran under the moving blades.

  “Here’s where we are,” John said as we came into the main computer room. “The website died about an hour ago. We unplugged from the T3 line, shut everything down and rebooted from emergency startup disks. There were so many viruses, worms and Trojans that we decided to wipe and reformat the hard drives and reload the operating systems on the servers. We have everything for the website on disks but none of it is loaded yet.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Let’s load the new firewall first, and then we can add the website.” I handed the four CDs to the computer techs, one for each of the four servers.

  “Do we have a master console?” I asked.

  “Over here,” one of the techs replied motioning us over.

  I sat down and typed in the communications link I had programmed into the firewall program. Once the servers were up I activated the link.

  “Okay,” I said, “this console will monitor the performance of the firewall and show us any intrusions, including source and location.”

  The computer techs loaded the website back onto the servers and we activated the website. “Website is live,” one of the techs reported.

  “Checking functionality,” another said. After a few minutes she reported back, “Functionality is 100%.”

  The computer techs cheered.

  “Now comes the real test,” I said.

  I sat at the master console watching with Tia standing behind me. After the website was up for five minutes the cyber-attacks started. The master console reported each of the attempted intrusions. So far nothing was getting through. A box at the top left of the screen displayed the number of attempted intrusions into the system, both current and total. A similar box on the upper right showed the number of successful breaches into the system.

  The number of attempted intrusions climbed rapidly as the number of successful breaches remained at zero. Within two minutes the program began reporting the source and location of the attempted intrusions from the reverse trackers we had programmed into the system.

  “John,” I called out, “you need to see this.”

  John came over and looked at the screen. “What am I looking at?” he asked.

  “These are the GPS coordinates of the computers that are being used to attack our system, and here are the user names of the people logged into those computers,” I said.

  “So how do we convert the GPS locations into an address?” John asked.

  I pointed to the next terminal over. Tia slid into the chair and brought up a program that identified buildings by GPS location.

  “Here we go,” Tia said. She looked at the addresses and the names of the building’s occupants. “This is strange. I have two, no, three warehouses, a novelty company, a marketing research company, a crating and shipping company, and seven, actually eight vacant buildings. This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Actually it does,” I said. “They’re all fronts for DIA operations.”

  “Are they going to know that we are tracking them and know who they are?” John asked.

  “They’ll figure it out very shortly,” I replied.

  I checked the intrusion display. We already had over a thousand total attempts on our new firewall, none of them successful.

  “Look,” John said, “the number of current attacks is dropping.”

  “It should,” I said. “Once they realize we are tracking the intrusions and know who they are, they will stop.”

  “Why is that?” one of the computer techs asked.

  “The DIA doesn’t want to leave any traceable evidence of their illegal activities,” John replied. “We have a log of the user names, ISP addresses, time of attack, and the substance of the attack itself. That’s enough to go into court and sue for damages.”

  “Current attacks just fell to zero,” Tia announced. “It’s over.”

  The computer techs stood and applauded. It was one of those rare moments in life when you were recognized for something worthwhile, something above and beyond what was expected. Tia stood up and grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to a standing position. The applause continued for another minute.

  “Congratulations you two,” John said. “Well done. Really, well done.”

  I turned to Tia. “It may be over for us,” I said. “But tomorrow the DIA will discover what the Trojans we downloaded to their systems do. It won’t be over for them for another month.”

  “Payback,” Tia said quietly, “can be a beautiful thing.”

  We both smiled at each other.

  * * *

  Tia and I rode with John in the limo back to the cabin. John implemented his plan to catch the mole.

  “I’ve made contact with that engineer that used to work for NASA,” John said with his back to the driver. I watched for a reaction from the driver. He glanced in the rear view mirror and then back to the road. “I think we may be able to bring him into the organization within the next week to ten days. I’ll know more as I get to negotiate with him on a more regular basis.”

  “Does he know about what we do?” I asked for the driver’s benefit.

  “He’s the one who told us about the meteor storm,” John said. “That’s a good place to start.”

  I looked out the window pretending not to be that interested. Tia noticed another glance from the driver. Whet
her or not this was our mole, the trap now had bait in it. John used the same theme the next day in the presence of the pilot and copilot of his Learjet 45. The following day John let slip the date and time for the ex-engineer from NASA to appear.

  The first test came when John arranged for the Carl Palminteri lookalike to board his Learjet 45 in San Diego and fly to Denver. Ed, Tia and I were invited to witness the festivities.

  We sat in the small coffee shop late in the evening and waited for John’s Learjet 45 to land. At 10:20 PM the jet landed. So far, there was no activity around the airport. John’s Learjet 45 taxied over to the hangar and entered. A few minutes later the Carl Palminteri lookalike walked out of the hangar and over to the coffee shop.

  I was startled as he walked in the door. I felt like I was looking at myself. It was very disquieting and strange.

  “Well, what do you think?” Ed asked looking over at me and Tia.

  Tia sat wide-eyed looking at the actor. “This is spooky,” she said.

  “Un-nerving,” I added.

  “Convincing?” Ed asked.

  “Oh, Yeah,” Tia replied, “If I didn’t know better…”

  Ed motioned for the actor to come over to the table. “Frank, these are two of my friends, Tia Harkensen and Karl Koenig.”

  “Pleasure meeting you,” he said offering his hand.

  I stood up and shook his hand. Tia shook his hand, as well. We learned more about him during the conversation, as John’s Learjet 45 was being refueled. He was an actor in San Diego and had been in several television episodes during the last, year and was lined up to do a series of commercials. He was happy to land this gig for the money involved.