“I’ll watch that,” said Randy.
“You got this, Mazz,” said Decker.
“I’m closing my eyes,” said Pierce.
“Ha! This is worse than that maneuver Bernie pulled,” said Mazzie.
“Near vertical climb,” said Randy. “Not recommended for a Vietnam-era aircraft.”
“Glad I didn’t know it was that old,” she said, beginning her maneuver.
She had just reached the edge of the container when all hell broke loose from the hangar. The video feed showed at least two people firing automatic weapons as she tried to land the drone.
“Put it in hover and switch to drone one,” said Randy. “One of the sentries just left his post.”
“And the gunfire will drown out the sound of the drone,” said Decker.
She put the decoy in hover a few feet over the container and took control of the first drone, moving it toward the container farm.
“How much room do you think I have?” she said.
“Aim for a point one-third of the way down from the western edge of the container field. The middle sentry has shifted east in response to the gunfire,” said Randy. “The gap is twice as large as before.”
“The decoy is down,” said Decker.
She bumped up the speed a little, bringing the drone five and a half feet above the ground to keep it as quiet as possible.
“Looking good, Mazzie. You’re almost there,” said Randy. “Can you tuck it between containers?”
“What’s the estimated distance between them?” she said, keeping her flight path steady.
“Five feet.”
“That doesn’t give me much room. I’d rather not risk it,” she said.
“No problem. Still looking good,” said Randy.
“Can we give the decoy some juice?” asked Decker. “Maybe draw the sentry’s attention away at the last minute?”
“If it’s still alive at all,” said Mazzie. “Start playing with the controls. I can’t think about that right now.”
Decker grabbed the controller from the desk while she concentrated on the approaching wall of containers. Almost there.
“Ha! I got it flying again. Sort of,” said Decker.
“They’re shooting again, too,” said Randy.
Mazzie stayed focused, gradually increasing the drone’s speed until she was ten feet away, when she quickly maneuvered it up and over the containers. She drifted a few containers to the west before landing.
“The tracker should be in place,” said Mazzie. “How are we looking?”
“You’re clear to extract using the same route,” said Randy.
She brought the drone up and over a few feet so she could verify that the tracker had successfully deployed. The compact black rectangular device sat between the container’s metal ridges.
“Tracker is deployed,” said Mazzie.
A few minutes later, they confirmed that her drone hadn’t attracted any attention. Mission complete. She expertly flew the drone away from the field until it had passed the far side of the runway, when she programmed it to climb to five hundred feet and fly in a straight line until it ran out of battery power.
Randy handed them all ice-cold cans of beer he’d quietly produced from a cooler hidden inside a nearby storage compartment.
“Don’t tell the boss,” said Randy.
A voice over the intercom boomed throughout the compartment.
“I see all and hear all,” said Bernie.
“So I was told,” said Randy.
Quincy leaned her head between the cockpit seats. “Told you. He actually doesn’t trust us.”
“Trust but verify,” said Bernie. “Just make sure there’s one left over for me. Nice job, everyone.”
Nice job indeed, Mazzie thought, prouder than ever of her work with the team.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Senator Steele could tell by Rich’s face that he didn’t bear good news. She’d convinced Karl Berg, the same longtime friend who’d connected her with Rich’s team, to call in a favor from one of his contacts at the National Security Agency. Karl claimed he’d used up all his favors by the time he left the Central Intelligence Agency, but he always seemed to have one last trick up his sleeve.
Less than an hour later, while they were cleaning up from lunch, Rich received a call from an anonymous gentleman who agreed to engage in a discussion. Nothing more than that. He stepped out with Tim, returning in under five minutes. Neither of them looked pleased when they rejoined her and the rest of the team in the kitchen.
“Do I need to call Karl again?” asked Steele.
Rich shook his head. “Why don’t we grab a seat and clean up later. This might take a while.”
Definitely not good.
“Do I need a stiff drink for this?” asked Steele.
“That’s entirely up to you,” said Rich. “But I wouldn’t say it falls outside of any parameters we’ve set or expected.”
“Sounds like sobering news, so I’ll skip the drink,” she said.
Rich was stoic, while the rest of the team smiled or softly chuckled at her wordplay.
“It’s like trying to get a public smile from the Queen’s Guard,” she said to a few more laughs. “Shall we adjourn to the living room? Or is that too casual?”
He caved in and grinned. “The living room is fine.”
Once they’d all settled into the sunken, window-enclosed sitting area, Rich broke the bad news.
“Berg’s contact came through in an unexpected way,” said Rich, nodding at Tim, who took over.
“I cut right to the chase with him and asked him if they could run a cyber-vulnerabilities check on the APEX Institute, knowing full well he would never agree to it. I just wanted him to understand from the start where the conversation was headed,” said Tim. “He immediately told me that wouldn’t be necessary, because APEX requests these several times a year—and their network security was one of the best they’d ever seen outside of their own networks.”
“But where there’s a will and a checkbook, there’s a way,” said Steele. “We’re all living proof of that.”
Even Rich laughed at that one.
“Normally, I’d agree, but he told me that they’ve managed to breach APEX network security twice, and it yielded surprisingly little. Administrative stuff mostly. Nowhere near the amount of data you would expect them to be hoarding. He strongly suspected that the real data gold mine at APEX was air gapped.”
“Air gapped?” she said.
“The ultimate in network security,” said Tim. “The network is physically isolated from any connection to the internet or an unsecured network. They could run their own server network, with no connection to the internet, and hardwire all of their computers to that network. For the computers you remove USB ports, Wi-Fi cards, or anything that could connect one of them to the internet. Air gapped. It’s impenetrable, unless we can physically sit at one of their computers.”
“And there’s no way we’re getting far enough into the building to pull this off, without a prolonged, very loud fight. And I suspect we’d need to penetrate deep into the building to tap into the air-gapped network. Those offices and computers will be behind a second and third layer of security,” said Rich. “We’d find ourselves stuck inside, sandwiched between the APEX security force and Metro PD within a few minutes.”
“Well, shit,” said Steele. “Where does that leave us?”
“Maybe it’ll be enough to torpedo their SKYSTORM plans and rattle the shit out of them here in DC,” said Rich.
“I don’t believe it will be enough to bring them to the bargaining table. Certainly not in good faith,” said Steele. “And I don’t mean that to reflect on your capabilities.”
“None of us take it that way, Senator,” said Jared. “This is one of the most difficult operations we’ve run in years. A tough nut to crack. But we’ll crack it.”
“Jared’s our optimist,” said Rich. “But short of hitting the building with a prec
ision-guided bomb or somehow driving an explosives-laden truck into the parking lot underneath it, we’re not taking APEX down physically. Electronically, we can’t touch them. We’re kind of stuck with the original plan. Deliver the biggest blow we can and hope for the best.”
“It’s not a bad plan,” said Steele. “APEX won’t go down, but whoever fills in the smoking gaps left behind will think twice about continuing this war.”
“We can always wage a war of attrition,” said Jared. “Pick off the survivors one by one as the opportunity arises, until all of the directors are gone.”
“They’ll get to me first before they run out of people to fill those shoes,” said Steele.
Anish jumped into the conversation out of nowhere, as always.
“Why do they have that many satellite dishes on their roof?”
Tim answered before Rich could jump down his throat.
“Satellite calls. An organization like APEX communicates primarily via encrypted satellite phones. It’s their securest option,” said Tim. “They’ll have a fixed repeater system throughout the building to route calls from individual phones through the dishes.”
“How many are there?” said Anish.
“You know how many, and we already discussed the air-gap issue . . . ,” said Tim, his voice trailing off in thought.
“Twenty. Which is enough satellite bandwidth to place eight thousand calls from that building, assuming four megs per dish. And that’s just a number I remember from looking into Inmarsat dishes. Those could be eight or sixteen megs.”
“It’s a lot of data bandwidth for a satellite phone network,” said Tim.
“Exactly,” said Anish.
“It would be pretty amateur of them to connect that to their air-gapped network,” said Rich.
“It would,” said Jess. “And the NSA would have probed the dishes. Anish is right, though. For once. Something doesn’t add up.”
“I just don’t see how we can exploit it,” said Anish.
“How do they connect to the internet to do research?” said Rich. “Even just basic stuff like if someone wanted to know the population of South Sudan for some kind of strategic assessment.”
“They probably maintain a massive air-gapped database with that kind of information. It could be updated daily by a research group on a less-secure network inside APEX, which puts together a package that is physically uploaded to the air-gapped network,” said Anish. “And if they want something right away that’s not in their archives, they could have stand-alone computer stations inside the air-gapped zone connected to the internet. It’s a simple arrangement.”
“So theoretically we could slip a virus into their update data stream,” said Jared.
“That sounds promising,” said Steele.
“Theoretically. Yes,” said Tim. “But then we’re left with the same problem. There’s no way to get the data out, and I sincerely doubt we’d be able to design a virus that could both evade detection and wipe out their network. They’ll have top-shelf virus protection protocols in place for any data headed into the air-gapped sector.”
“I hadn’t thought of wiping out their data,” said Rich. “Wiping out the people is more my style.”
“It certainly makes more of a statement,” said Tim. “But with that more or less off the table, and no way to steal the information we could use against them, this is the only other play I see. Try to take out their server and deprive them of the data they’ve collected. If we can’t steal their secrets and expose them, maybe erasing everything would be the tipping point we need to push them over the edge.”
“Interesting,” said Steele. “They must have thousands of unique files on people and companies. Government representatives and authorities worldwide. All of their research and planning. It could force them to start from scratch. Whoever steps in to fill the positions we open will face a daunting task. I think it’s worth a try.”
“We’ll start working on it,” said Tim.
“Then that’s our plan going forward,” said Rich. “Put the final touches on the Beltway strike and figure out how to drive that stake deep enough to put them out of business.”
“Let me know what you need and if I can pull any other strings,” said Steele. “I’ll spend every dollar available to me and call in every favor I’ve collected over the past few decades to bring APEX down.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Decker huddled around Randy’s sensor array station with the rest of the team, eyes fixed on the big screen. Bernie stood above them in the cockpit door, sipping a whiskey from a thick glass tumbler.
“Did I miss the open bar?” asked Decker.
“Yeah. We had happy hour while you and Pierce were playing with the guns,” said Bernie.
“Someone had to clean the two inches of dust off the gear you failed to properly store in the bunker,” said Decker. “Not that I’m complaining.”
And he truly wasn’t. Bernie had flown them to an isolated airfield he maintained in northern Oklahoma for emergencies and the rare instance he accepted a job in the US or Canada.
By design, the airfield and hangar looked neglected from the outside, but the inside featured an air-conditioned, generator-powered double-wide trailer and several underground bunkers containing the spare parts for his various aircraft, top-off amounts of fuel, food and water stores, a respectable weapons stockpile, and apparently enough liquor to stock a bar.
They’d spent the bulk of the day cleaning the weapons and equipment they might use, which basically meant Decker had them ready everything.
“Sounds like it. All work and no play makes you ground pounders dull boys,” said Bernie. “Find a plastic cup and I’d be happy to share a splash.”
“I’m good drinking right from the bottle,” said Pam.
“Not this bottle,” said Bernie. “There’s some Jameson in the hangar.”
Pam and Joshua started to back out of the cluster.
“A little later,” said Decker. “I’d like to do some preliminary planning once the tracker stops.”
“I don’t think the container is going anywhere for a while,” said Pierce. “We know it’s the Bayport Terminal. The truck is probably waiting to drop the container where all the trucks off-load. The terminal crews will move it onto the ship. Could take all night.”
“I have a feeling this is going right onto the ship,” said Harlow. “They appear to have picked up the pace after last night’s drone incident.”
“The plan looks simple enough,” said Bernie. “You sink the ship.”
“And that is why we’ll wait until a little later to enjoy a drink or two,” said Decker.
“What?” said Bernie.
“We can’t just sink a ship like that,” said Pierce.
“This isn’t an environmental thing, is it?” said Bernie. “Because I’ll program a flight pattern and crash this plane into that ship if that’s what it takes to get this APEX monkey off my back. I don’t care how much fuel leaks into the harbor.”
“That’s not the problem,” started Pierce.
“How are you going to get off the plane?” asked Decker.
“Parachute. How else?”
“I’d actually like to see that,” said Pierce, laughing. “Bernie skydiving. That’s on my bucket list.”
“Sounds like your bucket list could use an overhaul,” said Bernie. “What else is on the list? Seeing Decker glide down the street on Rollerblades?”
Everyone broke out into a laugh.
“You’ll never catch me on Rollerblades,” said Decker.
“Back to sinking the ship, and more importantly, getting the terrible image of Decker in Rollerblades out of our heads,” said Pierce, waiting a moment for everyone to settle down before continuing. “We don’t have access to the kind of explosives required to actually put one of those things on the bottom of the harbor. It would require something on the order of what Al Qaeda did to the USS Cole, but bigger. We’d literally have to place a barge full of explosi
ves next to the kind of ship they’re most likely using. Even a medium- or smaller-sized container ship dwarfs a Navy warship like the Cole. And then there’s the issue of the crew. They probably have no idea what they’re transporting. We can’t send them to the bottom of the channel.”
“He’s absolutely right,” said Decker.
“Can’t you blow it up from the inside? Set up some kind of chain reaction?” said Harlow.
“Same problem. We’d need to fill one of those containers with explosives and get it in the hold,” said Pierce. “And that would require hijacking one of those trucks without APEX noticing and then getting all the way to the ship without raising any alarms.”
“Sounds like a long shot,” said Bernie.
“Very long shot,” said Pierce. “I think our best course of action is to disable the ship or at least render it unseaworthy. A small explosion or two would give the feds a reason to board the ship and investigate. Steele can steer them in the right direction while they’re on board.”
“They’ll just shuffle the containers to another ship with extra space or buy the other ship outright and make room,” said Decker. “I guarantee they own this ship.”
“Then we’ll have to make enough noise to shut down the entire terminal and guarantee a thorough investigation,” said Harlow.
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Decker, before poking himself in the head. “Like minds.”
“I liked it better when she wasn’t talking to you,” said Pam. “Pretty soon you’ll be holding hands again.”
“I still can’t believe Decker didn’t give you any idea of what would happen last night,” said Bernie.
“She wouldn’t have come along if I told her, and we can’t stand to be apart,” said Decker, looking directly at Pam.
“Uh. Definitely liked it better with her mad at you,” said Pam.
“The container is moving,” said Randy, ending their banter.
They watched the signal move along a superimposed Google Maps image until it stopped in an off-loading area on the far western side of the three-quarter-mile-long concrete pier. The image was static, but the tracker’s location put it right where it could be picked up by one of the massive cranes and loaded onto a ship. APEX wasn’t wasting any time at all.
Skystorm (Ryan Decker) Page 19