Drone Threat

by Mike Maden

  THE BRIGHTLY COLORED monarch butterfly stood on the lip of the chimney just above the room where the two ambassadors were meeting. Its polycarbonate wings gently flapped, keeping the piezoelectric nanogenerators powering its onboard microphone and the rest of the unit. The Israeli engineers who built the audio surveillance device had done a brilliant job of biomimicry.

  Perhaps too brilliant.

  A brick-red American robin perched in a nearby elm spied the butterfly drone. It swooped in and snatched up the mechanical monarch in its yellow beak before the Israelis knew what happened and, worse, before the conversation down below had ended.

  35

  TEXARKANA, TEXAS

  Kan-Tex was one of the largest independent trucking firms in the United States. It owned and operated a vast fleet of tanker trucks that hauled oil, gasoline, aviation fuel, and other liquid petrochemicals across the entire contiguous United States. It had a number of federal and state contracts, but its primary business was civilian commercial long hauls for refineries and distributors.

  When Maria Mejias joined the company twenty-four years earlier, she thought she would spend her entire work life in a cramped, single-wide office trailer, trapped behind an IBM Selectric typewriter filling out dispatches for her boss, Jimmy Haygood, a semi-literate trucker turned businessman. But her boss turned out to be a business genius, building a national trucking empire through the ruthless acquisition of less efficient trucking firms. He also managed to increase his own operating efficiencies through the use of automation, which came relatively late to the trucking industry. Jimmy was famously loyal and generous with his employees, offering great benefits and profit-sharing opportunities. Maria took advantage of his generosity and completed her online bachelor’s degree in management information systems. An online pop-up ad during one of those courses led her to contact a San Diego company specializing in automated dispatching systems.

  Maria introduced the San Diego company to Jimmy and he instantly understood the system’s potential. His company had lost a $56 million lawsuit for a fiery school bus wreck caused by a Kan-Tex driver falling asleep at the wheel. Fortunately, Jimmy’s insurance covered the jury award, but his new insurance premiums threatened to eat up his profits along with the sky-high fuel costs he was experiencing at the time. He was desperate for answers, and Maria’s contact in San Diego delivered them on a digital silver platter.

  Just two years later, Maria was on the top floor of a brand-new office building, supervising twenty dispatchers sitting at automated terminals. Each workstation monitored up to thirty tanker trucks at a time. It was a real game changer for Kan-Tex. Not only did the new automated dispatching system track every single vehicle through GPS and provide real-time locations, it coordinated delivery routes, driver schedules, and even maintenance programs. Every aspect of the truck’s mechanics was under automated sensor surveillance. Kan-Tex was able to minimize fuel and maintenance costs because the automated system indicated truck speed, fuel efficiency, engine wear, brake usage, and transmission performance.

  But driver safety was paramount in Jimmy’s mind, partly because the vast majority of all truck wrecks were caused by driver error. Automated braking systems and automated remote throttle control were installed to prevent drivers from driving too fast or recklessly. Not only did this save expensive fuel, it saved lives and greatly reduced the company’s insurance costs. Mounted dash and rear cameras also broadcast real-time traffic video, giving dispatchers a live-action view of road conditions. The truck cabs even incorporated a driver fatigue monitoring system through eye tracking and blinking analysis. When the computer algorithms indicated a driver was overly fatigued, the dispatcher would be alerted and, if necessary, could take remote control of the truck and drive it from the workstation to get it off the road. It was similar to the Uninterruptible Autopilot system Boeing patented in 2006 to remotely seize control of hijacked aircraft.

  In order for the system to work across the nation, every truck was connected by satellite link to the Kan-Tex dispatch center. But the entire computer system was serviced, maintained, and repaired remotely from the computer company’s headquarters in San Diego.

  Maria had just finished her cigarette break when she sat down at her desk at noon. Her master monitor was networked into the other dispatching monitors. This allowed her to remotely supervise each dispatcher as well as select any of the 582 vehicles on the road they were all tracking today. She opened up her current favorite romance novel and dived back into the read, but ten minutes later a gentle alarm bell signaled that the entire dispatch system was down.

  Maria glanced up at her master monitor and saw the blinking message: SYSTEM DOWN FOR ROUTINE MAINTENANCE. SYSTEM WILL AUTOMATICALLY REBOOT IN 0:33 MINUTES. The other dispatchers all turned around to face her, confused and annoyed. Maria shared their concerns. The system was supposed to shut down for automated maintenance tasks only at midnight, when the fewest number of trucks were on the road. She thought about calling up the San Diego help desk but calculated that by the time she actually got through to somebody to initiate a maintenance program shutdown and a system reboot, the current maintenance activity would have already completed. She made a mental note to send an e-mail to her San Diego contact and ask him to change the maintenance schedule back to Saturdays at midnight.

  “Everybody take thirty,” Maria said.

  The frowns evaporated as the dispatchers bolted for the break room. Maria glanced at her screen again. Thirty-two minutes to go. She dived back into the novel—it was just getting to the good stuff. She told herself again it was just routine maintenance.

  No big deal.

  DALLAS, TEXAS

  Completed in 1964, the Woodall Rodgers Freeway Spur connected the two busiest traffic arteries in Dallas, U.S. Highway 75 and Interstate 35E. The only significant change the spur underwent in nearly fifty years was to accommodate the burgeoning arts district in downtown Dallas. In 2009 the city planners shut down a portion of the freeway and began turning it into a 5.2-acre urban oasis, the Klyde Warren Park, a pedestrian-friendly complex of restaurants, jogging trails, a dog park, a botanical garden, and other urban pleasures. By digging a massive eight-lane tunnel underneath the park, the highly traveled Woodall Rodgers freeway was able to stay in operation.

  Georgia Romero’s forty-foot tanker sped into the Woodall Rodgers tunnel, hauling nine thousand gallons of aviation fuel. The eastbound traffic was mercifully light at 11:05 a.m. CST and she was making good time, cruising at sixty-five miles per hour. She’d been stuck in this exact spot during the five o’clock rush hour in years past. It was a nightmare she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemies, not even her two ex-husbands, both OTR drivers like her. Her thirteen years behind the wheel gave her seniority at Kan-Tex, allowing her to pick the easiest routes, and the new dispatch system was doing a heck of job picking the best times. She didn’t like the idea she was on camera all the time and that the dispatchers could be watching her at any moment. It was like OnStar from hell. They didn’t even like her to wear her sunglasses because it interfered with the driver fatigue system they installed in her cab. She hadn’t had a wreck in eleven years, but the dispatchers wouldn’t relent.

  Hank Williams blared on the radio and she sang lustily along. Her voice pinched off in mid-warble when her throttle pedal plunged into the floorboard and the truck lunged forward, snapping her head back against the seat. Before she could react, the steering wheel yanked hard left and the left brakes seized. Thirty tons of liquid payload shuddered violently behind her as the tractor spun left, whipping the long silver tank behind her in a hard swing out to the right. She caught a glimpse of the tank in her peripheral vision as it slammed into the tunnel wall in a shower of sparks and splintering metal. She saw the explosion before she heard it, but an instant later she was vaporized in the crushing ball of fiery gas that filled the tunnel like a thermobaric weapon.

  36

  WASHINGTON, D.C.
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br />   Every eye around the table in the Situation Room was fixed on the video monitor. Eaton held the remote control. Video footage from the TXDOT cameras inside the Woodall Rodgers tunnel played a brief clip of the Kan-Tex tanker truck rocketing through the light traffic. The image froze.

  “There. It looks like the left front brake engaged. See the smoke from the burning rubber?” Eaton said. She hit the Play button again. The image advanced in slow motion. “As you can see, physics took over from there. The tanker swerves, hits the wall, and—”

  A fiery explosion engulfed the last camera, killing the image in a haze of digital snow.

  “How many dead?” Lane asked.

  “Including the driver, seven, possibly more. Hard to tell. Not much left, forensically. Dallas PD is still running down VIN and plate numbers from the wreckage. They’ll reach out to the addresses of record and try to piece together a more definitive list of victims.”

  “Thank God it didn’t happen at rush hour. Would’ve been a holocaust,” Grafton said.

  “Where else?” Pearce asked.

  “The 405 in Los Angeles, not far from LAX, along with Atlanta, Chicago, and Denver. No other fatalities. Mostly lane closures, traffic rerouting. Two of those were fuel spills, so HAZMAT teams had to be called in.” Eaton noted the time on the wall. “Some of them won’t be cleaned up by evening rush hour, so there are still plenty of headaches on the way.”

  “Do we have any Gorgon Sky on these attacks?” Lane asked.

  Pearce shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. The attacks all happened exactly where we didn’t have them in place.”

  “Of course not,” Chandler said, unable to hide his disdain.

  “How soon until all of the major metro areas are covered?” Lane asked.

  “I’ve got commitments from Boeing, General Atomics, Northrop Grumman, and three other majors. We’re getting camera pods and software packages out to each of them so they can link their systems into our network. We should have seventy percent of the country covered within the next seven days.”

  “No faster?” Lane asked.

  “They’re balls to the wall now, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ve got a question. Weren’t all of the tankers from the same company?” Chandler asked.

  “Yes. Kan-Tex, out of Texarkana, Texas.”

  “Is Kan-Tex on any of our watch lists? Or any of its employees?”

  “Not on mine,” Eaton said.

  “Nor mine.” Mike Pia, the director of national intelligence, had arrived just minutes earlier. In his wire-rimmed glasses and tailored pinstripe, he looked like a well-heeled college professor or a Wall Street executive. He’d been both at one time or another in his storied career.

  “Shouldn’t you guys have the same list?” Chandler asked.

  “There are a lot of damn lists these days,” Pia said. “Too many.”

  “I don’t have a problem with that,” Peguero said. “The last thing we need is one single list of enemies of the state. That’s begging for abuse.”

  Pearce bit his tongue. He personally knew of a case where a man was on one terror suspect watch list and yet passed his FBI background check when he applied for—and received—a concealed carry permit. No wonder most Americans felt that the federal government was too big and too inefficient to be of any use other than sucking away billions of tax dollars to accomplish nothing but employ an army of worthless bureaucrats.

  “Can we please stay on topic?” Lane asked. A vein throbbed on his temple.

  Chandler waived a hand. “Sorry. Just frustrated.”

  “Join the club.”

  “The fact that all of these tankers were from the same company is good news. It probably means it was just that one company that was hacked,” Pearce said. He turned to Eaton. “And from the description you gave of their automated dispatch system, it sounds like all they needed was access into one terminal, probably the administrator’s. From there they took complete control.”

  “I’m starting to miss the horse and buggy,” Chandler said. “Analogue had its advantages.”

  “I had a call in from the Washington Post ten minutes ago, sir. I told them to sit tight but that will only buy us an hour. Maybe two.” At twenty-eight, Alyssa Abbott was not only the youngest White House press secretary in history but also Lane’s youngest senior advisor. She was another busty blonde who seemed destined for cable sportscasting or anchoring Fox News. But she was whip smart and rough as a cob, growing up with four older brothers who were all active-duty U.S. Marines. Abbott was an award-winning war correspondent and frequent on-air personality before signing on with Lane’s presidential campaign.

  “What do they know?” Eaton asked.

  “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the tanker crashes all happened within thirty minutes of each other. The wire services want to call this a terrorist incident—a case of ‘suicide truckers.’”

  “Holy Moses,” Chandler said. “Just what we need.”

  “We’ve got to give them something or they’ll go out with it,” Abbott said.

  “What do you suggest?” Lane asked.

  “Environment and Public Works has been pushing for a new highway bill. Money for more roads and bridges. We can spin it that way.”

  “You want to blame all of this on potholes?” Pearce asked.

  “Of course not. But I can feed them some inside dope about new funding legislation we’re proposing—”

  “But we’re not,” Lane said.

  Abbott smiled. “That’s where the spinning part comes in. Let me promise them something exclusive on the highway bill we may or may not be working on, and promise to backfill this other story when we’ve got more facts to give them. If I toss in the national security angle, that should buy us another day.”

  “That supposes we actually learn anything by tomorrow. What exactly do we have right now? Let’s go around the room, starting with you, Julissa.”

  The attorney general shook her head, frustrated. “The Dallas FBI field office is flying up to Texarkana right now with a computer forensics team. They’re already remotely accessing the site to monitor it and shutting it down to keep anything else from happening. The San Diego computer services firm Kan-Tex contracts with is cooperating as well. It will be at least a day and probably more before we can identify the hackers.”

  “Or maybe never, if they’re good enough,” Garza added.

  “Maybe not,” Eaton said, shrugging. “Good news is that we managed to piece together enough security camera footage to trace the flag drone’s flight path backward from the White House lawn to its point of origin. We discovered it took off from the back of a boat moored at the Capital Yacht Club.”

  “Please God, tell me the boat belonged to a registered Republican,” Chandler said, grinning.

  “A Green Party lawyer, actually. A lobbyist for one of the environmental organizations. She was and still is out of the country. We’re still digging around but my team is confident she’s not the one behind this.”

  Lane turned to the DNI seated next to him. “Mike?”

  “Melinda indicated yesterday that chatter is up. Same on our end. The jihadi sites are all abuzz that something’s going on, but nothing specific. If ISIS is behind this, they’re keeping quiet about it.”

  “Any reason to think they’re not behind it?” Lane asked.

  “Nobody’s claiming anything at the moment. Doesn’t mean they won’t later. And this kind of attack—public, disruptive, newsworthy—is right up their alley. The only thing missing is a high body count.”

  “They gave it one helluva college try today,” Chandler said. “We’re just damn lucky they couldn’t pull it off.”

  “Seems to me they could’ve killed dozens, maybe hundreds more. Those tanker trailers are practically rolling ordnance, and they had complete control of the tra
ctors pulling them,” Pearce said. “All they had to do was wait for worse traffic or run those tankers into more vulnerable targets.”

  “Are you suggesting restraint again?” Pia asked. He’d read yesterday’s briefing minutes. Thought Pearce’s point was interesting.

  “Seems like it.”

  “Restraint for what purpose?”

  “Clearly not terror, at least in the classic sense. I think these attacks are pointed at the president. First it was the airports, now it’s the highways. These both have profound economic implications.”

  “We’ve already established that ISIS is trying to pull down our economy,” Chandler said. “What’s your point?”

  “The attacks are escalating. That means the consequences for not acceding to their demand to fly the flag only get worse. The goal is to get you to fly that flag, Mr. President, not kill Americans.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” Garza said.

  “Why is flying the flag so important?” Lane asked. “Wouldn’t a terror strike on our soil be victory enough?”

  “This is about humiliation, not just publicity,” Pearce said. “ISIS pledged to fly the black flag over the White House back in 2014, the same year they declared the Caliphate. If they fail to keep that promise, they’re the ones who are humiliated.”

  “Believe me, I have no intention of ever flying that black diaper over my own home,” Lane said. “Alyssa, spin the story any way you need to to keep the newspapers away from this as long as you can.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Chairman Onstot will be here in an hour to talk about our military options. Let’s break for lunch and reconvene when he arrives. If we can’t find the bastards here, we’ll have to take the war to them over there.”

  Chandler and Grafton exchanged a glance. Music to their ears.

  37

  BLACK LAKE, MICHIGAN

  A late-model sedan turned off the two-lane asphalt and onto a tree-lined path. Tires crunched on the gravel as the sedan crept a hundred yards toward the single-story ranch house. Security cameras fixed to light poles tracked their progress.