Cybernation (2001)

by Clancy, Tom - Net Force 06

“Really.” Her voice was as dry as the Sahara.

  “Well, okay, I don’t think it is going to be particularly dangerous, if you must know. You aren’t going to have to do anything risky, just walk around and get a feel for things, get the routine down. I don’t want you skulking into parts of the ship that are off-limits to the public, no trying to swipe computer codes, like that. I’ll have Jay come up with some holographs of the programmers he’s found, you can study them, so if you happen to see one while you are there, fine, but the main thing is to gather information readily available.”

  “For . . . ?”

  “For when and if we might need it. I don’t know exactly where this is going to lead, but let’s take a couple of hypotheticals and run with them. Suppose Jay is right. Say that CyberNation is responsible for the attacks on the net. And they are being mounted from this ship in the Caribbean. What can we do about it without proof? They are on the high seas, and our laws don’t apply. Sure, we could send a Navy destroyer or missile cruiser down to do a search—assuming we could convince the admiral commanding, Secretary of the Navy, the Joint Chiefs, and the president to go for it, not that likely a proposition. If we’re wrong, international outcry would blow whoever was responsible—that would be me—right out of a job. Even if we were right, every Third World country on the planet would scream to high heaven about American imperialism and gun-boat diplomacy. The drawback to being a superpower.”

  “ ‘O! it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.’ ”

  He looked at her, puzzled.

  She grinned. “I’ve been waiting years for a chance to use that. Measure for Measure,” she said. “One of my political professors at NYU was a big fan of Shakespeare; he used to throw quotes at us like peanuts to overfed monkeys—we pretty much ignored them. The only other one I can ever remember came from Titus Andronicus. Not much chance to toss that one into a conversation.”

  “They made a movie of that one, didn’t they? All about rape and murder and vengeance? Real upbeat, cheerful stuff.”

  “Oh, yeah. The line was Aaron’s: ‘If there be devils, would I were a devil, to live and burn in everlasting fire, so I might have your company in hell, but to torment you with my bitter tongue!’ ”

  “Must have been an interesting character, your teacher.”

  “Oh, yeah. He went to work for State a few years after I graduated. One of the China hands now, I think.”

  “Well, I’m impressed with your knowledge of the Classics. You want to go on this trip or not? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have any trouble finding volunteers if you don’t.”

  “Yeah, I heard Jay.”

  “Well, I certainly wouldn’t force you. It’s up to you. But you can’t say I didn’t offer.”

  She nodded, and thought about it.

  “If we can get enough stuff to be sure CyberNation is the guilty party,” Alex said, “and that they are doing it from that ship, then we can maybe do something about it ourselves.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “John Howard’s boys and girls are bored, so he tells me.”

  “The director would kill you.”

  “Not if we were right. It’s within our charter, sort of—at least we won’t be sneaking into some foreign country. We have as much right to be out on the ocean as anybody, right?”

  “That’s real iffy, Alex.”

  “Not as bad as some we’ve done and gotten away with. Remember the trips to Grozny? And to Guinea-Bissau?”

  “That’s how you justify it? Making it the least of several evils?”

  “Why not? I remember situational ethics from college, too.”

  She shook her head.

  “Besides, it’s all vaporware right now. We don’t know for sure that Jay is right. Maybe after we gather a lot of little pieces, we can puzzle it together.”

  “And you’d really be okay with me going?”

  “As your husband and the father of your child, not so much. As your commander, I am more sanguine about it. You are a trained operative, you can take care of yourself, and the level of danger is very low.”

  “And leave my husband with a toddler?”

  “I have Guru to help. And you’ve been griping about being cooped up in the house or office, worried that you might turn into a woman who talks about baby poop at social gatherings. Go. Take a couple days, lose a few dollars of the government’s money in the slot machines, get some midwinter sun—properly skinblocked, of course.”

  She smiled. “Okay. I’ll do it. Thanks, Alex.”

  “We live to serve. Guess I better give John Howard a call.”

  “You’re sending him, too?”

  “No, but he might want to start thinking about ways to sneak onto a ship in the middle of the ocean.”

  On the Bon Chance

  In the lowest hold behind locked and guarded doors were the EMP bombs. They wore wooden frames, made from two-by-four fir boards, and sat on big pallets, also made of wood. They smelled faintly of something spicy, and that and a seawater-and-oil odor drifted about in the damp hold. Santos knew vaguely how they worked, these devices, but they were not his thing.

  He had made the mistake of asking. The explosives expert practically peed himself as he talked happily about overlapping radiation pattern lobes and capacitors, coaxial this and coaxial that, of hardened components and planes of radiation.

  Santos listened with half an ear, nodded, and murmured from time to time, so that the bomb man believed, perhaps, that he had some idea of what the man was talking about.

  “We’re talking fifteen, twenty megajoules in ten-hundredths of a microsecond,” the man said, his face ecstatic with pleasure at having an audience.

  The man pointed at the nearest bomb, which looked to Santos like nothing so much as a torpedo in an old submarine movie. A little smaller and thinner, maybe. More pointed.

  “This particular model uses PBX-9501. The armature is surrounded by a coil of heavy-gauge aluminum wire, that’s the FCG stator. The winding splits into halves, to increase induction. It’s cased in a heavy block of tightly wound Kevlar and carbon fiber, so it doesn’t blow apart before it generates the field—”

  A bomb that didn’t blow things up. How odd.

  Well, yes, it did explode and destroy itself, but its primary purpose was to fry sensitive components with a powerful electromagnetic pulse generated by the explosion. Very complicated. It seemed easier to him just to drop a blockbuster on the target and take it all out, but apparently magnetic radiation could go through concrete better than explosives, and besides, they didn’t want to lose the infrastructure altogether, they would need it themselves later.

  Like a biological weapon that killed people, but left the buildings standing, an EMP bomb was designed to kill computers, but allow the people to remain. A bloodless weapon.

  “Not as good as the Vircators,” the bomb man continued, “which are electron beam/anode devices that will vibrate at microwave frequencies. They can get forty gigs out of this design in the lab, but they are heavy and much more complicated—”

  It was all just so much useless technical babble to Santos, who cared only that these giant finned silver turds would blow up when and where they were supposed to blow up, and do the job they were intended to do.

  These looked big and heavy, but the bomb man had assured him they could be easily transported by common aircraft. Even though they had come via supply ship, they could, in fact, be carried on one of the big passenger helicopters, no problem. Each one only weighed as much as, say, four or five big men, and on a craft that could carry thirty or forty people, half a dozen of these devices would ride quite nicely.

  The bomb man started off on some new techno-rant, but Santos waved him quiet. “Yes, I understand,” he said, lying through his smile. “I need merely be certain you understand where and when they must be delivered.”

  “Oh, yes, I know.”

  “Good. Attend to that. I will check back with y
ou as we go.”

  Santos strode away, his footsteps upon the steel grating echoing slightly in the warm, dank hold. You’d think it would be cooler down here, right next to the water and all, but it was not.

  Timing on all this would be critical. His part was easy enough to accomplish, but a failure on the parts of others could be fatal to the mission. They had only a week, and everything must be in place and synchronized exactly by then. It was not much time when you had to deploy men, transfer bombs, and make certain you know exactly where and how to strike each target. But, it was what it was, and he was happier to be going into the field than sitting around waiting.

  Moving was better than waiting, almost always. Once you got moving, to hesitate at the wrong moment, to look away from the goal, that could get you killed. Yes, you had to plan in advance, know your tactics so that you did not make a stupid mistake, but once you started rolling, hesitation was a killer. The man who blinked first lost. And that would not be him.

  26

  Crawfish Point

  Galveston, Texas

  October 1957

  It was raining hard. There was a tropical storm offshore, maybe a hurricane, still far enough away so it wasn’t any real danger to the state yet, but close enough to bring lots of rain and choppy seas in the Gulf. Yet, there Gridley came, in an old-fashioned wooden shrimping boat, arrogant as always, secure in the knowledge that he was invincible.

  Lack of confidence had never been one of Jay’s problems.

  Keller, wearing a black slicker and hiding in a mangrove tangle at the edge of the estuary, with a scoped 30- 30 Winchester deer rifle, watched Gridley maneuver the boat through the shallow water as he headed for the Gulf, checking for roots or half-submerged logs he might hit with the boat’s propeller. Or did they call them “screws” on boats this size?

  Once again, the scenario was over the top, much more than necessary to troll for the kind of information Jay wanted. The man never let one simple vision serve when he could do nine visions complicated. And even the public scenarios he chose were major sensory sims, like that stupid climb up Mount Fuji. Please.

  Keller grinned at that memory. That had shaken old Jay up some, when he’d gone over in persona and sat down right next to him. Old Jay hadn’t expected that.

  When the boat got within range, Keller laid the rifle’s forestock on a gnarl of root and aimed. The rain slashed down hard, the wind blew, and the scope was wet and blurry. The trawler was bouncing up and down on the rough water, and enough of it was sloshing up through the mangrove roots to keep Keller soaked, despite the raincoat. It wasn’t an easy shot.

  He managed to put the first round into the wheelhouse side window, shattering it, but missing Jay by a good foot. He worked the bolt and fired again, aiming at the hull just below the normal waterline when the boat came up on a wave. He ejected the empty shell and chambered a third round, which he fired at the life preserver hung next to the wheelhouse. Must have missed that completely, he didn’t see it hit.

  The boat chugged on, no sign of Jay, who must be ducked down inside the wheelhouse, wondering what the hell was going on.

  Enough. He had other business to which he needed to attend. This was fun, pulling Gridley’s chain, but Omega was coming, and they had less than a week to get ready. Not nearly enough time. He was going to have to let this go. Too bad.

  In this scenario, which was Jay’s, Keller had a small boat hidden behind the mangrove island in the swamp flats just short of the Gulf where some nameless river emptied into it. Probably it had a name, come to think of it, since Gridley did stuff like that.

  Keller dropped the rifle, for which he had no further use, and worked his way to his boat. Might as well check things out as he left. Gridley wouldn’t have come here if he hadn’t been looking for something in particular, and maybe Keller could spot it.

  He reached the boat, and started to untie the line that kept the craft from drifting away. When he did, a monstrous figure rose from the water like the creature from the Black Lagoon.

  Keller froze.

  The monster said, “Surprise!” and Keller realized it was a man in scuba gear and a wetsuit. Behind the face mask, he recognized Gridley’s basic persona, which looked pretty much like the real man.

  Gridley had a big knife in his hand. He smiled and moved awkwardly toward Keller, his flippers slapping the water noisily—

  Keller bailed.

  CyberNation Train Baden-Baden, Germany

  Keller came out of the scenario cursing. Dammit! He had underestimated Gridley again! He should have known better! He threw the wireless sensory gear down hard, and regretted that instantly. These headsets weren’t cheap. If he broke it, the replacement would come out of his budget.

  He picked up the set, touched the test button. The diodes lit up green, one after another.

  Thank God for small miracles. He put the set down more carefully, hanging it on its rack.

  Overconfidence had been the downfall of a whole lot of programmers, and he had seen it happen enough to know nobody was immune, even him. Gridley might have opted for the status quo, turned into a fedhead, fat and happy, but he still had some moves. Keller was better than they’d been in college, but it wasn’t smart to think that the Old Thai had stayed where he’d been. He was, after all, the head of Net Force’s computer operation. He might not be as good as Keller was, but he wasn’t a total lubefoot, either.

  It was too bad he didn’t have time to call Jay out for a full wrangle. To make it a one-on-one, no-holds-barred. To show Jay who was better now.

  Well. There was no help for it. And no real harm done. Keller’s net persona was a mule, a Joe-average construct that didn’t look like anybody in particular, certainly not his real self. Even if Gridley had seen him, he hadn’t seen anybody he could put a face to.

  And even if he had known who it was, well, so what? Knowing who and figuring out where he was, finding him and doing anything about it before Omega launched wasn’t going to happen. And afterward? Jay wouldn’t be able to do much to him then, either.

  The train was moving. That very morning it had left the siding where it had been for days, and was now only a couple hundred kilometers northeast of Dijon, France. It would arrive at the border shortly, where it would turn around and head back toward Berlin. The powers that were in CyberNation did not want their three mobile centers anywhere near their headquarters in Geneva. The ship was in the Caribbean, the train went back and forth between Berlin and the French border, mostly, half-loaded with tourists who knew nothing of the high-tech gear on board the other half. The third station was on a barge ostensibly being rebuilt at a shipyard in Yokohama, Japan, though it could be hauled off at any time. If the German authorities being paid to ignore the train developed pangs of conscience, or if the Japanese harbor officials who were bribed not to worry themselves overmuch about the repairs on the barge suddenly went mad, the ship was the safety, the most secure backup. If something happened to the train or the barge, or both, the ship would be the base nobody could legally touch. But any one of them was enough by itself to get the job done. All three were similarly equipped, and what one did was quickly uploaded to the others, so that at any given moment the lead team was never more than a few hours ahead of the others. Major data transfers were done four times a day in all directions, so if the train or boat or barge was suddenly hit by a giant meteor, there wouldn’t be more than six joint hours of work lost to the remaining two centers.

  It was a good system. Not Keller’s design, but good, nonetheless.

  Well. As much as he’d like to square off with Gridley and kick his ass, he had to get on with it. Omega was coming, and his group wasn’t going to be caught short. Maybe after it all came down he’d go find Jay and show him up, but that would just have to wait.

  Washington, D.C. The Zoo

  Jay and Saji walked along, looking at the tiger cage. It was cold enough so the big cats were inside their heated enclosure. A lot of the less furry animals seemed
to be. For a long time after he had been mauled in VR by such a creature, it had been all Jay could do to look at the tigers. Now, he made a point to stop by the zoo every so often to remind himself.

  He was only paying half his attention to the walk though, and, of course, Saji noticed.

  “Where are you?” she said. “Not here.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I was thinking about the fishing boat scenario. I think I know who the shooter was.”

  “Really? How so?”

  “Well, when I ran the lists of the best computer programmers graduated in the last ten years, I came up with quite a few I knew. Me, for one. A lot of guys I went to school with at CIT, others I knew from the net and web, conferences, like that. Some of them I’ve kept in touch with, others kinda drifted away, so I tried to run down some of the guys I used to pal around with that I haven’t seen in years.”

  They passed the brown bear compound. The bears weren’t around. Hibernating maybe?

  “Yes,” she said. “And . . . ?”

  “A couple have died. One in a car wreck, one from cancer. Most of the rest of them went into the field and have done pretty well. A few dot-biz millionaires, some commercial software producers. Some got out of the field, went to work in other areas. One woman I knew who was an ace programmer opened a chain of daycare centers for school kids. One guy writes comic books and TV shows. A few did well enough to quit work and live in Hawaii or somewhere. A couple dropped out completely to raise organic carrots or whatever on dinky farms in Footlick, Missouri, or like that.”

  “Yes. And . . . ?”

  “Two are missing. No record of them. Didn’t die, didn’t get married or change their names, just dropped off the face of the Earth. One of them was a weirdo we all expected would go ballistic one day and assassinate somebody. The other was one of my best friends, a guy named Jackson Keller. We exchanged a couple of Christmas cards after school, and then lost track of each other.”